SOURCE: Burt, Stephen. “A Delightful Muldoodle.” New Leader 130, no. 8 (5 May 1997): 18-19.

In the following review, Burt lauds Muldoon's skillful verb usage and accomplished verse in Kerry Slides.

Something like a consensus now deems Paul Muldoon the best Irish poet younger than Seamus Heaney, and American readers are figuring out—only about a decade late—that he's among the most inventive poets in the English language. Muldoon published his first book of poems in 1972, when he was in his early 20s, and has been expanding his ambitions and sharpening his wit ever since. Among his hallmarks are: sonnets, comic or extravagant approximate rhymes, self-suspicion, abrupt transitions, sex and violence, explorers and quests, and grammatical constructions that shift and roll like spinning, and probably rigged, roulette wheels.

Every five years or so since the '70s Muldoon has published another dense, ambitious volume of poetry, including at least one long...