The Word on the Street

"This is still Paul Muldoon. While these lyrics follow a more rigid, verse/chorus/verse structure than many of his poems, there are lines that are heavy with allusions and obsessed with their own creation, as is characteristic of the poet . . . The work in this book mostly resembles the wordy lyrics of another New Jersey poet, Bruce Springsteen . . . What both Mr. Springsteen and Mr. Muldoon seem to realize is that a rock lyric does not have to force its poetic prowess. The ‘go-cart Mozarts' and ‘racket boys' on the boardwalk of Mr. Springsteen's lyrics occupy the same place as the fact-checker who can't properly trace the root of pilus in Mr. Muldoon's ‘News Headlines from the Homer Noble Farm,' or the barley farmer who abandons his land without a word in ‘Why Brownlee Left.' They are symptoms of a larger sadness brewing in the space between the philosophical and the mundane. They want to escape—their town, their class, their lover—but sense the futility of retreat. The nameless band at the center of ‘Comeback' had ‘no sooner said farewell / Than it was time to reunite.' They end up back in Jersey, playing the Meadowlands, ‘just another band / With only two surviving members.'"—Michael H. Miller, The New York Observer