Maggot: Poems

Paul Muldoon

ISBN 10: 0374200327 / ISBN 13: 9780374200329

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010

Pages are clean and are not marred by notes or folds of any kind. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0374200327I2N00

Synopsis:

Of Plan B, an interim volume that included several of the poems in Maggot, Robert McCrum recently said in the London Observer that “Paul Muldoon, who has done so much to reimagine the poet’s task, has surpassed himself with his latest collection.” In his eleventh full-length book, Muldoon reminds us that he is a traditional poet who is steadfastly at odds with tradition. If the poetic sequence is the main mode of Maggot, it certainly isn’t your father’s poetic sequence. Taking as a starting point W. B. Yeats’s remark that the only fit topics for a serious mood are “sex and the dead,” Muldoon finds unexpected ways of thinking and feeling about what it means to come to terms with the early twenty-first century. It’s no accident that the centerpiece of Maggot is an outlandish meditation on a failed poem that draws on the vocabulary of entomological forensics. The last series of linked lyrics, meanwhile, takes as its subject the urge to memorialize the scenes of fatal automobile accidents. The extravagant linkage of rot and the erotic is at the heart of not only the title sequence but also many of the round songs that characterize Maggot, and has led Angela Leighton, writing in The Times Literary Supplement, to see these new poems as giving readers “a thrilling, wild, fairground ride, with few let-ups for the squeamish.”

About the Author:

Paul Muldoon is the author of ten books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Moy Sand and Gravel (FSG, 2002) and, most recently, Horse Latitudes (FSG, 2006). He teaches at Princeton University.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Maggot: Poems
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: 2010
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: As New
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket