Hay

My heart is heavy. For I saw FionnualaThe Gem of the Roe The Flower of Sweet Strabanewhen a girl reached down into a freezer binto bring up my double scoop of vanilla.-White ShouldersSeamus Heaney has called his colleague Paul Muldoon one of the era''s true originals. While Muldoon''s previous book The Annals of Chile was poetry at an extreme of wordplay and formal complexity Hay is made up of shorter clearer lyric poems retaining all of Muldoon''s characteristic combination of wit and profundity but appealing to the reader in new and delightful ways. His eighth book it is also his most inviting-full of joy in language fascination with popular culture and enthusiasm for the writing of poetry itself. This is the first of his books to really capture the effect of America on his poetic sensibility which is like a magnet for impressions and the miscellany of the culture.