SOURCE: Kirsch, Adam. “The Virtuoso.” New Republic (30 November 1998): 56-60.

In the following review of Hay, Kirsch contends that Muldoon's inventive verse is too often a facile display of technical and stylistic virtuosity, whereby complexity and difficulty serve to “impress,” rather than “convince,” the reader.

“Virtuoso” is a loaded compliment, an honorific that conceals a reproach. It implies performance, as distinct from creation: a performer stands before his audience and impresses them, while a creator must enter into his audience and engage them. In music, the two roles are usually separate, and so there is a natural place for the virtuoso, with his showmanship and his displays of technical control. In poetry, however, it is much less clear that one should aspire to the “virtuosic.” In poetry, the performance is the creation. The skill that the poet displays in writing his poem remains in the poem itself, and it...