[SteveWal]

If there's anyone in contemporary poetry who has done more to transform the sonnet into something rich, strange and very heterodox than Paul Muldoon, I don't know. Here's one of my favourites:

Quoof

How often have I carried our family word
for the hot water bottle
to a strange bed,
as my father would juggle a red-hot brick
in an old sock
to his childhood settle.
I have taken it into so many lovely heads
or laid it between us like a sword.

An hotel room in New York City
with a girl who spoke hardly any English,
my hand on her breast
like the smouldering one-off spoor of the yeti
or some other shy beast
that has yet to enter the language.


------------------
Steve Waling

[MacArthur]

Yes, well...does this really work as a sonnet? And , for that matter, do you really like the poem?

There are things I like about it. The voice is very natural and the poem's clear and accessible throughout. The oblique angle of the opening sentence drops a lot of information on the reader in a passing way. The imagery is concrete, natural and pertinent.

Great strengths-- but limited almost entirely to the octave...the sestet is conspicuously weaker. The heated brick is a concrete narrative detail-- the Yeti's spoor, a fanciful image. Even the syntax is less plain and loses immediacy.
Truthfully, the poem would benefit by losing the last six lines.

And in the first 8 lines, neither the faint "chimes", nor the far-fetched scheme justify disrupting the meter to secure them at line-endings...the affinities between the words are there anyway, and line-endings have other and better things to do.

How often have I carried our family word
for the hot water bottle to a strange bed,
as my father would juggle a red-hot brick
in an old sock to his childhood settle.
I have taken it into so many lovely heads
or laid it between us like a sword.

...is already much stronger, and could probably stand alone-- an elegant packet.

Same question-- why a sonnet?



[This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited April 07, 2001).]

[Tim Murphy]

Excellent points, Mac. Muldoon's a worthy soldier in Ireland's "standing army of three thousand poets," but his poems have more problems than merits. "Between us"--the speaker and his lovely heads? Disagreement in number? Of course the sword has to lie between the singular poet and the plural heads, or Horrors! there'd be a full rhyme. The metaphor of the breast as Yeti turd is repugnant, far-fetched, and hopelessly rhyme driven. I'm forever baffled by gifted poets who go to such lengths to deprive their utterances of the greatest weapon in our arsenal, metrical force. And to so diguise their rhymes that Vendler can puzzle over them for a few minutes. But hey! Muldoon is Professor of Poetry at Princeton, and I'm not. Maybe that's why he writes as he does. Nonetheless, I like "Quoof," although the sad thing is that it's one of his best poems. And all its concreteness turns in the end to yet another poem about poetry.

[A. E. Stallings]

Steve,

Thanks for posting.

I enjoyed it, but on the whole would have to weigh in with MacA. The octave is quite nice, the sestet less so (per reasons given by Tim Murphy).

This has some richness, particularly with the hot brick image, but I do not find this so very strange or heterodox. It rimes, it has 14 lines, an octave, a sestet, it is essentially iambic. True, the rime-scheme is nonce, but nonce rime schemes are part of the tradition (as Shelley's "Ozymandias," or Coleridge's "Word without Hope"). The most radical thing about it is that it is heterometric, which is not really so shocking, is it?

I did enjoy the freedom and playfulness of this. I had not read it before. Thanks very much for sharing. I'd be intrigued to read more of these.

Alicia

[laughing outloud]

Seems just a confused jumble of stuff. Call it a sonnet. Call it a shovel. Call it anything. It is self-indulgent, lazy writing. Lacking the strength and talent to employ the actual sonnet form, this man claims it a virtue to mutilate. This is "sour grapes" writing--disparaging what you probably really can't do.

The appeal that this type of writing has to many people is that it is so banal that almost everyone thinks they can write as well themselves and be "a great poet" like this man. In a classroom that gives the students a sense of accomplishment---"Why I'm writing as good as the teacher!" but it creates a generation of people who can't tell good from bad because they have been told the banal is "great".

But why go on.

NOTE: THE CRITIC HAS CHOSEN TO GO ON ADDING ANOTHER POST BELOW.



[This message has been edited by laughing outloud (edited April 09, 2001).]

[SteveWal]

I think I love this poem even more now. It obviously causes people with their heads buried in the past great consternation.

It's no more "about" language than any normal sonnet. It's about the desire to mark out your own territory (hence the "spoor".

Anyway, rules are made to be broken.

------------------
Steve Waling

[Tim Murphy]

Steve, Hardy on Whitman neatly expresses my attitude toward Muldoon: "I fear he writes as he does because he can do no better." He introduces a little music into his amorphous "verses" to pacify both camps. But he's an incompetent prosodist who lacks the genius of our Kay Ryan.

[MacArthur]

I fear Muldoon is "ours", though. It clarifies everything to be told he teaches at Princeton, under the tutelage of G.K. Williams (if they would give that guy a Pulitzer, is mine in the mail?).

It's hard not to suspect Muldoon was a better poet in Ireland.

[This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited April 08, 2001).]

[Len Krisak]

Steve,

At the risk of being seen trying to knit up
the raveled sleeve of controversy, I certainly
agree that Muldoon does weird things with the
sonnet form. But is that a good thing?

He starts off with some relatively concrete
lines that appeal to the senses, then, for no
reason I can discern, goes to that hideous
line about the yeti's spoor. Did he mean "spore,"
by any chance? Does he not see (as Tim points out)
that the grammar, the syntax, requires us to
compare the spoor to the ESL woman's breast?

I simply don't know what to do with someone who
writes that way. Rules aren't devised to be broken--
they're just the accumulated wisdom--wholly conventional,
yes, but then that's their strength, not their weakness!--
that allow us to tak advantage of the mistakes
and experience of others.

Good yeti grief!

As to Princeton, I believe he's C. K. Williams,
not G. K.---but he's still awful.

Text

[laughing outloud]

Originally posted by SteveWal:
If there's anyone in contemporary poetry who has done more to transform the sonnet into something rich, strange and very heterodox than Paul Muldoon, I don't know. Here's one of my favorites:

Quoof

How often have I carried our family word
for the hot water bottle
to a strange bed,
as my father would juggle a red-hot brick
in an old sock
to his childhood settle.
I have taken it into so many lovely heads
or laid it between us like a sword.

An hotel room in New York City
with a girl who spoke hardly any English,
my hand on her breast
like the smouldering one-off spoor of the yeti
or some other shy beast
that has yet to enter the language.

It often helps to demonstrate the emptiness of this type of writing by simply eliminating all the line breaks. Then asking is this interesting or even well-written prose?


How often have I carried our family word for the hot water bottle to a strange bed, as my father would juggle a red-hot brick in an old sock to his childhood settle. I have taken it into so many lovely heads or laid it between us like a sword. An hotel room in New York City with a girl who spoke hardly any English, my hand on her breast like the smouldering one-off spoor of the yeti or some other shy beast that has yet to enter the language.

If this "poem" had been presented in the above form would anyone think it excellent writing? Is there anything compelling about the language? If it were part of a longer prose passage would an editor sit back and marvel at the "poetry" of this man's prose or would he get out the blue pencil and start correcting it?

And interestingly enough, we now have discovered a way to determine if a poem is a sonnet or not. Run the lines together and convert it to prose. Then hand it to someone else, tell them it is a sonnet, and ask them to divide it back up into 14 lines. The easier it is for them to do it the more likely the poem is a sonnet. Could anyone divide the above passage up into 14 lines the same way the "poet" did except by sheerest accident? The above poem is not a sonnet. It has no intrinsic form.


Quoof
One takes it that "quoof" is what his family calls a hot water bottle.

"How often have I carried our family word for the hot water bottle to a strange bed, as my father would juggle a red-hot brick in an old sock to his childhood settle."

The first "sentence" of this "sonnet" asks us to make a comparison between "carrying our family word for the hot water bottle to a strange bed" and "my father juggling a red hot brick in an old sox to his childhood settle". (Settle=a wooden chair or bench often with storage space, the seat acting as a cover. I had to look that up. It is possible this type of bench might have been used as a child's bed but the dictionary did not mention that and I am only guessing but I suspect that is what the poet intends.)

(First it should be noted that during his father's childhood the poet was not born yet so any knowledge of the poet's concerning exactly how his father carried a hot brick in a sock must be secondhand or from his imagination.)

One thinks the poet is trying to tell us that he likes to take a hot water bottle to bed and insists on doing this even when sleeping in a strange bed with a strange female. Seeing this bit of apparatus (as well it might considering what it resembles and what it might imply) apparently unnerves women. Therefore he is careful how he presents it. Now unless the poet is writing some sort of Freudian goulash I can't imagine why an image of his father as a child and he about to get in bed with a women while carrying a hot water bottle would be poetically useful. (I admit both the hot water bottle and the hot brick serve the purpose of providing warmth.) When one examines the simile one can only come to the conclusion that cold feet run in this man's family and it is a family tradition for the men to need to take something to bed with them. Other than that what's the point? It is a little funny admitting a quirk like this--but is that all there is too it? "The poet as buffoon" has become a clique in poetry. It is a trick that requires little skill or imagination. It is the poetic equivalent of coming on stage with a fake arrow through your head and saying "Alright! I'm a poet! Laugh at me!"--well, hahaha--now where the poetry?

"I have taken it into so many lovely heads and laid it between us like a sword."

The second sentence of the sonnet doesn't say much except to emphasis that he explains the word "Quoof" to the women (He also brags about his many conquests--the poet writes this "sensitive" poem while demonstrating the usual male braggadocio)and adds that sometimes he uses the hot water bottle to convey to the women a lack of sexual interest. This, I suppose, is much better than using it to convey to women a "sexual interest". One supposes that this substitution of a water bottle for the traditional sword smacks of sheer genius to this poet. As they would have said in Shakespeare's time--a killcow conceit. (There was a story about a really bad ancient Roman poet who, everytime the muses gifted him with a poem, would sacrifice a cow to them. One imagines, wherever Muldoon goes the cows also moo in fear.)

"An hotel room in New York City with a girl who spoke hardly any English, my hand on her breast like the smouldering one-off spoor of the yeti or some other shy beast that has yet to enter the language."

I am unfamiliar with the adjective "one-off". I assume it is from one of the American dialects, possibly British, Irish, or Bahamian. I will not speculate about what it might mean.

The third sentence is just an image and has no connection with what comes before except it is about being in bed with a girl. The girl's breast is being compared to a turd--one suspects for color and shape but probably also for taste. That it is a "yeti" turd or the turd "of some other shy beast whose name has yet to enter the language" is suppose to add significance to the comparison. WHY? Beats me. This is the old trick of "THE STARTLING IMAGE" for the sake of "THE STARTLING IMAGE". Intellectually there is nothing here and emotionally there is only nose holding laughter. The idea of comparing a woman's breast to a yeti turd comes from The Tipsy Muse. Muldoon should sacrifice a cow to her.

This poem falls into the dreaded genre of "confessional poetry". The poet is telling us something intimate about himself--either real or made up--it doesn't matter. In the genre points are given for grossness and I suppose that is why the yeti turd makes an appearance.

When this poem is examined, it falls apart. It turns out to be empty of all but a few cheap tricks and a few cheap laughs. I admit that as one examines it more closely it gets funnier but I am sure that was not the poet's intention. This poem was "spread" across 14 lines to hide the fact that nothing much is there. Calling it a sonnet is just another cheap trick. A bit of distracting tinsel. The poet is using the "mystique" of sonnet writing to add a value to a poem that has no intrinsic merit.


Laughing Outloud



[This message has been edited by laughing outloud (edited April 15, 2001).]