Paul Muldoons ninth collection of poems his first since Hay 1998 findshim working a rich vein that extends from the rivery appleheavy County Armaghof the 1950s ... » 

Paul Muldoons ninth collection of poems his first since Hay 1998 findshim working a rich vein that extends from the rivery appleheavy County Armaghof the 1950s in which he was brought up to suburban New Jersey on the banksof a canal dug by Irish navvies where he now lives. Grounded glistening asgritty as they are graceful these poems seem capable of taking in almostanything and anybody be it a Tuareg glimpsed on the Irish border BessieSmith Marilyn Monroe Queen Elizabeth I a hunted hare William Tell WilliamButler Yeats Sitting Bull Ted Hughes an otter a fox Mr. and Mrs. StanleyJoscelyne un unearthed pit pony a loaf of bread an outhouse a killdeerOscar Wilde or a flock of redknots. At the heart of the book is an elegy for amiscarried child and that elegiac tone predominates particularly in theelegant remaking of Yeatss A Prayer for My Daughter with which the bookconcludes where a welter of traffic signs and slogans along with the spiritsof admen hardware storekeepers flimflammers fixers and other forebears areborne along by a hurricaneswollen canal and private grief coincides with someof the gravest matter of our age. «