Paul Muldoon, The Word on the Street (Faber)
Bookshops had their uses and still do. Rather than sit here and order anything with one flick of the wrist, you could scrutinize it before deciding on the purchase.
Although in retrospect, it might look clear enough that this is somewhat less than a new book of Muldoon poems, the blurb sounded as if they might be poems that could also, and do, serve as the words to 'rock' songs. It might have been Muldoon's new direction, perhaps having thought he had gone as far as he could with his poetry modus operandi.
I remember Bono praising the facility of Salman Rushdie who had written a few verses of lyrics at the time of the novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet. But it can't be that difficult for someone who has written a number of monumental, exuberant novels to knock out a few lines to go with a big U2 riff.
Some of the songs here can be found at the website of the band, The Wayside Shrines, http://waysideshrines.org/ where they can be appreciated as they were surely intended to be. While Muldoon is at least as inventive and imaginative as most pop song writers and more so, the words on their own are only half of the piece, the other half of a karaoke backing track, and few if any pop songs can be expected to succeed as poems without the music they are set to. And as it stands I don't think they are satisfying on their own because Muldoon isn't quite in the same category as a songwriter as Stephin Merritt or Elvis Costello any more than you would expect those two masters of the craft to succeed as poets in the way that Muldoon does, which is good enough to almost give his name to the period he is writing in.
In Jersey Shores, we get,
I think of Botticelli
When he juxtaposes
In the Sistine Chapel
The foundling Moses
With Jesus in the creche
which, one accepts, is more sophisticated than, say,
Sugar,
Ah, Honey, Honey,
You are my candy girl
And you got me wanting you
but The Archies works very well for me, and no more sophistication is required, but unfortunately Jersey Shores is not one of the tracks available on the website so we can't judge how well it works as a song.
There is plenty to like about The Wayside Shrines but the feeling remains that this book is an opportunity for Muldoon adherents to buy a promo for the album. I am very much a fan of Paul Muldoon as a poet without being a devoted completist but this collection is not something, I think, to put alongside the likes of The Annals of Chile, Hay or Maggot and, nor, I dare say, was intended to be.
A lot of cricketers really want to be golfers; some footballers become racehorse owners, or even trainers; there are poets who want to be rock musicians. It must be accountants whose ambition it is to be poets.
And so, by all means, if you need everything by Muldoon in the same way that I need anything and everything by Thom Gunn, then it's a fine thing and you must have it. But if you are only an admirer of one of the finest poets in the English language of the present day, I wouldn't think you'd need it.
