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Reports from a Small Press Burnout: Paul Muldoon
The esteemed poetry bard Paul Muldoon is interviewed in the issue of Valium I have here. I read some of Muldoon’s poems not too long ago. They were like dying nursery rhymes kept alive by IVs of perverted erudition. He could be ignored except for the fact that he is considered by many, and considers himself, to be a genius. He did, ahem, win the Pulitzer.
“I don’t write these poems,” Paul says, “I really don’t. And frankly my position is that only if one accepts that notion is there a possibility of anything interesting happening.”
What a spiritual “notion.” Seems to me the interview should have stopped right then and there. How is it that a statement renouncing his responsibility for his own work somehow sounds self-congratulatory? Must be part of the big mystery of life. I have a few “notions” of my own. One of my notions is that Paul Muldoon is not interesting, in fact Paul Muldoon is a buffoon. (I’m a poet too!) Another notion is that he’s a run-of-the mill bullshit salesman. I suppose he’s talking about the GREAT SPIRIT that runs through everything and animates us, and in this way we owe our words to the forces of nature, or super-nature. Ok, wonderful. In a way that’s probably true. But then why is he doing these fucking interviews? Why doesn’t he just disappear? Why is he accepting money? If he didn’t write his poems then he…
