Plan B featured in Guardian Review, 16th May 2009
Posted on: Wednesday, May 20, 2009Plan B, a new poetry collection by Paul Muldoon with photographs by Norman McBeath was featured in The Guardian on Saturday, 16th May. Adam Newey highlighted the synergy between image and text, ‘Muldoon writes of McBeath's fine-grained photographs that they have an intense immediacy; "the medium does not impose a sense of mediation…there is, rather, an invitation to meditate". Look at a picture of a lone sheep in a field… and "the very idea of a 'subject' soon begins to seem crudely inappropriate"; or perhaps better to say that it ramifies in unexpected ways.’
Towards the end of the article, Newey focused on Muldoon’s poetry; ‘the dry humour is never far away, but there's true pathos, too, in poems that show a more personal side to Muldoon than he has revealed before. A couple of witty 14-liners, "A Mayfly" and "A Hummingbird", deal with lost love affairs, and a delightful disquisition on hare-lore also takes in a close friend's imminent death from cancer. In the end, the poem suggests that, for hare and human alike, it's a matter of will whether to "continue to tough it out till / something better comes along or settle for this salad of blaeberry and heather / and a hint of common tormentil". The savour of that bitter herb is apparent throughout this book, but Muldoon, one senses, will always be on the side of toughing it out.’
| To order a copy of Plan B at the special price of £14 (free P&P), email us at info@enitharmon.co.uk or click here (offer available until 15th June) To read more of The Guardian feature click here |
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