SOURCE: Birkerts, Sven. “About Paul Muldoon.” Ploughshares 26, no. 1 (spring 2000): 202-08.

In the following essay, Birkerts offers an admiring commentary on Muldoon's challenging and idiosyncratic poetic style.

I first heard of Paul Muldoon through the affectionate enthusing of Seamus Heaney, who donned his conspiratorial mien—as if agents of some imagined opposition might be lurking near—and confided that his somewhat younger compatriot was “the real thing.” I sought the work out, though I'll confess I was some time coming to it. This would have been in the mid-1980's, the time of Quoof and earlier collections. Accustomed to the solid subject-focused work of Heaney, who had taught Muldoon as an undergraduate, I thought Muldoon was working a bit too hard at the “Musee des Beaux Arts” thing, enthroning obliquity. But eventually, I made my connection. I readjusted whatever lenses I use to read poetry, and then, suddenly, they...