Writing of Paul Muldoon's last collection, The Annals of Chile, for which he won the T. S. Eliot Prize, Seamus Heaney described him as "one of the era's true originals." A. S. Byatt has spoken of Muldoon as "an original genius, using words in a new way, witty and profound."
That combination of wit and profundity is everywhere apparent in Hay, an extraordinarily vital and various new collection that contains the most open and inviting as well as some of the most satisfying poems Muldoon has ever written. They range from a dream-vision in a New Jersey mudroom to a poem based on English and American proverbs to another taking the form of an errata slip to a sequence of thirty sonnets set in a Paris restaurant where it seems a waiter finds a "muldoon"--a stolen credit card--belonging to Mr. Muldoon.
By turns glorious and gritty, elegant and edgy, this new book is sure to bring even wider acclaim for "the much-laurelled Irish wonder-poet" (The Independent on Sunday, London) who "began as a prodigy and has gone on to become a virtuoso" (Michael Hofmann, The Times, London).
