Ireland The Volkswagen parked in the gap,
But gently ticking over. You wonder if it’s lovers And not men hurrying back Across two fields and a river.

Sven Birkerts has said, It is not usual for a poet of Muldoon’s years to have … an oeuvre disclosing significant shifts and evolutions. But Muldoon, more than most, is an artist in high flight from self-repetition and the deadening business of living up to created expectations. The body of work in Poems 1968-1998 – a comprehensive gathering of Paul Muldoon’s eight volumes – finds a great poet reinventing himself at every turn. Muldoon’s career thus far shows us a fascinatingly mutable climate in which each freshening period brings – as his first collection was predictively titled – new weather.