Two years after publication, Paul Muldoon's New Weather remains the most important first book by an Irish poet since Seamus Heaney's Death of a Naturalist appeared in 1966. With this single volume of 36 poems, Muldoon clearly distinguished himself as a major presence in Ireland—not only among the select half-dozen poets in their 20's whose work has managed to outlive its traditionally terminal form of entry (the chapbook series), but also among the Dolmen "professionals," whose reputations were secure even before Muldoon began his apprenticeship. Muldoon, now 24, is still one of the youngest on the scene. But the authority of his first book rules such things as birthdates out of consideration. These poems are the result of continuous age and aging.

New Weather is a sui generic work, even as its title suggests. Muldoon's work is derivative only to the extent that all good poetry is derivative: it is...