The End of the Poem Oxford Lectures [Paperback]

InThe End of the Poem, Paul Muldoon dazzlingly explores a diverse group of poems, from Yeats's All Souls' Night to Stevie Smith's I Remember to Fernando Pessoa's Autopsychography. Muldoon reminds us that the word poem comes, via French, from the Latin and Greek: a thing made or created. He asks: Can a poem ever be a free-standing structure, or must it always interface with the whole of its author's bibliographyand biography? Muldoon explores the boundlessness created by influence, what Robert Frost meant when he insisted that the way to read a poem in prose or verse is in the light of all the other poems ever written.

Finally, Muldoon returns to the most fruitful, and fraught, aspect of the phrase the end of the poem : the interpretation that centers on the aim or function of a poem, and the question of whether or not the end of the poem is the beginning of criticism. Irreverent and deeply learned,The End of the Poemis a vigorous approach to looking at poetry anew.

Without question one of the most inventive poets writing in English today. Andrew Frisardi, The Boston Sunday Globe

[Moy Sand and Gravel] demonstrate[s] why [Muldoon] is regarded by many as the most sophisticated and original poet of his generation . . . dazzling. Mark Ford, The New York Review of Books

Moy Sand and Gravel, Muldoon's ninth book of poems in twenty years, shimmers with play, the play of mind, the play of recondite information over ordinary experiences, the play of observation and sensuous detail, of motion upon custom, of Irish and English languages and landscapes, of meter and rhyme. Peter Davison, The New York Times Book Review

Paul Muldoonis the author of nine books of poetry, including the Pulitzer PrizewinningMoy Sand and Gravel(FSG, 2002). He teaches at Princeton University and, between 1999 and 2004, was professor of poetry at Oxford University.