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'I want you to tell me if grief, brought to numbers, cannot be so fierce': Stanzaic form, rhythm and play in Paul Muldoon's Long Poems

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 20:28 authored by Martin Ryle
Three long poems by Paul Muldoon are discussed, and the argument is advanced that their rhythmic organisation is located above all at the level of the stanza. From early in his career, Muldoon has not used regular metres; the iambic pentameter, whose traces are often heard in the lines of his contemporaries such as Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon, is never audible in his later work. Comparison between Muldoon's 'At the Sign of the Black Horse...' and Yeats' 'A Prayer for my Daughter' (which it echoes) establishes that Muldoon, unilke Yeats, does not inscribe his presence in strong metres; rather, his verse seems to mimic the disordering action of the tempest he describes. Yet Muldoon speaks in a distinctively individual and (post-)Romantic voice. The articulation of that voice owes much to his use of the stanza, whose repetitions and returns (in 'At the Sign of the Black Horse...', in 'The More a Man Has...', and in 'Sillyhow Stride') make out of materials laden with 'grief', in Donne's term, a paradoxically ludic poetry.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Etudes britanniques contemporaines

ISSN

1168-4917

Issue

39

Page range

143-156

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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