Paul Muldoon [Muldoon - The End of the Poem

IM VERY GRATEFUL to a number of people who helped me as I prepared these lectures, which are published here much as they were given, though sometimes in slightly extended versions.

Im particularly grateful to my first readersMichael Cadden, James Richardson, P. Adams Sitney, and C. K. Williamsall friends and colleagues at Princeton, on whom I called for frank and forthright comments. It is I, Im afraid, who remain responsible for any lapses they were too polite to bring to my attention.

Im also grateful to Jill Balcon, C. D. Blanton, Maria Brodsky, R. F. Foster, John Fuller, Seamus Heaney, Vicki Howard, Alan Jenkins, Hermione Lee, Peter MacDonald, Jamie McKendrick, Edward Mendelson, Ben Metcalf, Brett Millier, Gerard Quinn, Dean M. Rogers, Jon Stallworthy, Erica Wagner, Ruth Webb, and Clair Wills for their generosity and graciousness in helping me with specific matters of information and interpretation.

Im grateful to the editors of American Poet , American Poetry Review , Dublin Review , Fulcrum , Harvard Review , New England Review , Parnassus: Poetry in Review , and The Yellow Nib , in which several of the lectures first appeared in print, and to Dorothy McCarthy of Oxford University Press, who kindly oversaw publication by the press of the inaugural lecture.

As always, I have a special word of thanks to Paul Keegan and Christopher Reid of Faber and Faber Ltd, and Jonathan Galassi of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, editors and publishers as steadfast as one might hope for, particularly in this spasmodic era.

My visits to Oxford were cheered by Joan Arthur, Paul Burns, Melanie Clancy, Jenny Houlsby, and Jo Jackson, stalwarts all of the English Faculty Office. Im particularly grateful to Sir Walter Bodmer and the Fellows of Hertford College, among whose number I was happy to be counted while I was Professor of Poetry. I was also happy to be allowed through the gates of Hertford by the magnificent Pam Horwood and Judy Mullee.

A final word of thanks to Tom Paulin, who first raised the idea of my standing for the Professorship and who (with his wife, Giti) continued to support me in ways, intellectual and physical, too numerous to mention.

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint the following previously published material:

Homage to Clio copyright 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith, and Monroe K. Spears, Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden. Excerpts from Academic Graffiti copyright 1960 by W. H. Auden, The Fall of Rome copyright 1974 by W. H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts copyright 1940, renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden, The Love Feast copyright 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith, and Monroe K. Spears, Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden, The Riddle copyright 1940 by W. H. Auden, Five Songs V (Nocturne), copyright 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith, and Monroe K. Spears, Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden, and Aubad copyright 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith, and Monroe K. Spears, Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden, from Collected Poems , by W. H. Auden. Excerpt from September 1, 1939 copyright 1940, renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden, from Collected Poems , by W. H. Auden, and The English Auden , by W. H. Auden, reprinted in the United States by permission of Random House, Inc. and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

12 OClock News and excerpts from At the Fishhouses, The Bight, Crusoe in England, The End of the March, In the Waiting Room, Jeronimos House, Little Exercise, The Map, Poem, Giant Toad, and Roosters from The Complete Poems 19271979 , by Elizabeth Bishop.Copyright 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Tobacco Shop, by Alvaro de Campos, copyright 1986 by Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books.

I tried to think a lonelier Thing and excerpts from You cannot put a fire out, Im nobody! Who are you?, A clock stopped, Publication is the auction, Through the strait pass of suffering, Of bronze and blaze, Two butterflies went out at noon, When one has given up ones life, Absent place an April day, A nearness to tremendousness, The outer from the inner, Youre right the way is narrow, Faith is a fine invention, I cried at pity not pain, Exultation is the going, Two swimmers wrestled on the spar, and Those dying then reprinted by permission of the publishers and the trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson , Thomas H. Johnson, ed., J532, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Excerpts from Aurora is the effort, I saw no wayThe heavens were stitched, When the astronomer stops seeking, As if some little Arctic flower, There is solitude of space reprinted by permission of the publishers and the trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson , Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Sea Poppies and excerpts from Oread, Eurydice, Sea Violet, Sea Lily, Sea Rose, and The Master by HD (Hilda Doolittle), from Collected Poems, 19121944 . Copyright 1982 by The Estate of Hilda Doolittle. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press Limited and in the United States by New Directions Publishing Corp.

Excerpts from Hysteria from Collected Poems 19091962 , by T. S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

The Mountain from The Poetry of Robert Frost , edited by Edward Connery Lathem, published by Jonathan Cape and reprinted by permission ofThe Random House Group Ltd; in the United States, copyright 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright 1942 by Robert Frost, copyright 1970 by Lesley Frost Ballantine, reprinted by permission Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Excerpts from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Directive, The Draft Horse, West Running Brook, The Most of It, The White-Tailed Hornet, A Considerable Speck, The Birthplace, Too Anxious for Rivers, The Milky Way is a Cowpath, The Ax-Helve, and Once by the Pacific from The Poetry of Robert Frost , edited by Edward Connery Lathem, published by Jonathan Cape and reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd; in the United States, copyright 1939, 1942, 1951, 1956, 1962 by Robert Frost, copyright 1964, 1970, 1975 by Lesley Frost Ballantine, copyright 1923, 1928, 1947, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Excerpts from Fish-Leap Fall and The Prophet, by Robert Frost, reprinted by permission of the Robert Frost Estate.

Welsh Incident and excerpts from The Face in the Mirror, Letter to S.S., and Escape, by Robert Graves, from The Complete Poems: In One Volume (2001), edited by Beryl Graves and Dunstan Ward. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press Limited.

Keeping Going from Opened Ground: Selected Poems 19661996 , by Seamus Heaney, copyright 1998 by Seamus Heaney; excerpt from The Real Names from The Electric Light , by Seamus Heaney, copyright 2001 by Seamus Heaney; excerpt from Elegy from Field Work , by Seamus Heaney, copyright 1979 by Seamus Heaney; excerpts from The Strand at Lough Beg, The Casualty, The Skunk, The Otter, Field Work, and Gutteral Muse from New Selected Poems 19661987 and Opened Ground: Selected Poems 19661996 ; excerpt from A Brigids Girdle from The Spirit Level and Opened Ground: Selected Poems 19661996 ; reprinted with permission of Faber and Faber Ltd and, in the United States, of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.