The Annals of Chile [Paperback]

Paul Muldoon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 1995

Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, The Annals of Chile confirms Paul Muldoon’s stature as one of the most talented poets of his generation. The heart of the book is the long poem “Yarrow,” in which Muldoon’s powers of insight and wordplay and surprising association are on exuberant display: evoking the 1960s, the poet conjures up a boundless historical present peopled at once by Davy Crockett and Tristan Tzara and Wild Bill Hickok, by Maud Gonne and Michael Jackson, all bought swifly and vividly to life by his fantastical imagination. The collection also contains a group of shorter poems, including “The Birth,” a delicate lyric which celebrates the arrival of a baby girl; “Incantata,” a deeply felt elegy to a former lover; a Muldoon’s inspired adaptation of an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The core of Muldoon's (Madoc: A Mystery) latest collection is the rambunctiously imaginative long poem "Yarrow," which offers, among three-dozen other thematic preoccupations, a lover's search for a "pugilist-poet." In the poem, Muldoon sees himself as the leading contender-and in the boxing ring of contemporary poetry, the metaphor works nicely, as well. This writer is a heavyweight with a subtle, lightning touch. Erudite and witty, he's the Cassius Clay of poetic craft. "Yarrow," for example, recaptures the hedonism of the '60s via a super-literary protagonist and his enclave of smart, wickedly dissipated friends. The loose narrative of their adventures is also inhabited by figures from antiquity, medieval England, Cold-War American pop culture and so on. As is customary with Muldoon, the ride is both harrowing and exuberant. His facility with verse improves with each book, and the streak continues here. A minor beef: the Irish-born poet is becoming almost too dense and whimsical. Still, Annals will fatten his reputation on this side of the Atlantic.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“Paul Muldoon is one of the most inventive and ambitious poets working today. The Annals of Chile is his best book yet.” – Lawrence Norfolk, Times Literary Supplement

Product Details

• Paperback: 191 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 30, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374524564
• ISBN-13: 978-0374524562
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,788,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Muldoon's best, April 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Annals of Chile (Hardcover)

Lordy, it would be ANYBODY'S best. Paul Muldoon's work has always been great but *The Annals of Chile* is a breakthrough. "Cows" and "Twice" are pitch- and picture-perfect and the intricacies and expansiveness of "Yarrow" could keep me occupied and entertained for months, but more than anything else it is the unforgettable "Incantata" that makes this book a treasure. Who knew that poets like this still existed? (Only in Ireland, I suppose -- and by the way, if you like Muldoon make sure to check out conationals like Michael Longley and Ciaran Carson. A good time is guaranteed to be had by all.)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinarily rich, too much to take in at once or twice!, April 10, 2005

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Annals of Chile (Paperback)

Muldoon here follows his overwhelmingly learned Madoc with another circumnavigation of all his forbiddingly clever and sometimes satisfying contours of his (not our) known world. Part one, as with the previous volume, takes in bits of this realm and, oin Brazil, confounds me even as in the tender and lacerating Incantata, moves me with its honesty at a past amour. The Sonogram and Footling and The Birth track his daughter's arrival, while the long poem that comprises most of this volume, Yarrow, takes on the 60s, colonialism, a sheltered Irish childhood, Arthurian figures, drug culture, Romans, the Wild West, and "the loathsome Mike Oldfield" to name a few topics.

Not for the fainthearted, but rewarding in fits and starts and never less than ambitious, although with no annotations or guidance, each reader will never get out of it a fraction of the learning Muldoon's put into it. This criticism, as Incantata avers, is not unknown to the poet, but it does discourage all but the boldest who journey into a phantasmagorical and ever-changing depiction of intelligence at its craftiest and most conniving. Be prepared to stumble a lot, but don't give up yet.