From The Times Literary Supplement
May 7, 2008
A new poem by Paul Muldoon

When the Pie Was Opened

I

Every morning the water again runs clear
as it has for twenty years
of jabs
and stabs
where we’ve joined in single combat, my dear,

on a strand or at a ford.
Every evening I’ve fleshed my sword
in a scabbard.
The hedgehog bristling on your tabard.
Behind each of us is arrayed a horde

of heroes ready to vie
for a piece of the pie
with Hector, Ajax, Ferdia, Cu Chulainn,
and all the other squeaky-clean
champions who’ve once more forgotten to die.

II

Forgotten to die like the cancer cells
in their pell-mell
through an escutcheon-fesse.
The hot compress
on a pustule from which the pus wells

as it welled for Job.
Every evening the impulse to disrobe
and take a little potsherd
to scrape the skin off whatever we’ve butchered.
Was there really a probe

into whether or not you would stand the test
of taking a hedgehog for your crest?
As if you might gather
yourself about a core
of high explosives packed into a vest.

III

A vest opened now like a dossier.
A badger with a white line running all the way
back from its snout.
Would that the world were indeed to be broken out
of its crust like a hedgehog baked in clay

by gypsies at the end of a lane.
Would that it were to hang from a crane.
The steam rising through a slash
where we’ve made a hash
of the whole thing. As for the bloodstain

on the cross-arm,
somebody told me vinegar works a charm.
Lifts off the whole kit
and caboodle like a pheasant at last making good
its escape from a pheasant farm.

IV

A pheasant farm where we watched a pheasant’s ascent
translate into a dent
on our automobile. Wham.
I bet they could make out even on the jam-cam
steam rising from the vent

of a wound dressed with sphagnum moss.
Bosom-boss.
The white line running all the way from the badger
to the gamekeeper-turned-poacher
who really couldn’t give a toss

about having to share
her champion’s portion of Brie or Camembert.
The minor obsession with glitz
from a major klutz
who’s found herself enmeshed in a snare.

V

A snare in which we find ourselves enmeshed
as every evening our swords are fleshed
while Hector and Ajax
apply flax
and white of eggs. The page is refreshed,

my dear, only as our servants bind
our wounds. A rind
closing over the Camembert or Brie
in some fancy hostelry
where we’ve wined and dined

in anticipation of putting on our gear
and steeling ourselves for the belly-spear.
The shit-storm
through a bloody stream
in which every morning the water again runs clear.

Jim,
I love this. I haven't got my head round this chain yet but the impudence and the strong earthy pulse and sounds have definitely captured me.
There's an implacable progression as the links develop.

Did you type it all out or paste it in?
Janet

Hm… This occupies three-quarters of a page of the current <u>TLS</u>, which reached me this morning.

On 2nd April, Mick Imlah, Poetry Editor of the <u>TLS</u>, allowed an entire page of the <u>TLS</u> to a poem (in fact quite a good one, I thought) taken from a forthcoming book of verse, The Lost Leader (Faber: May 2008) by one Mick Imlah, Poetry Editor of the <u>TLS</u>, a book which, to make assurance doubly sure, was announced also on the contributors page of the same number.

Let us say that Imlah has an ambiguous reputation as an editor here in the UK, whatever his merits as a poet.

Clive

Janet I pasted it in wanting to stay faithful to the original linebreaks.

I like it also, it rewards rereading and it is original and provocative.

Jim

Thanks for posting this, Jim. Although I have Muldoon's collected poems at home, I haven't yet read it and in fact know nothing about his work at all, I'm ashamed to say. I've read the poem you've posted through just once, but my mind is so befogged by grading freshman compositions today that I'm not going to try rereading it for a while to try to figure out what the poem's argument is. Like Janet, I find something appealing about the poem, its sounds and feel, but as I said, my first hasty reading has left me wondering what it's getting at. I'm curious if this is a problem for others. Does anyone want to attempt an exposition of poem, giving a broad outline of its argument?

Paul,
I think it would be infinitely tedious to try to find some tangible narrative in this. It seems to me to be a chain of allusions and puns and associations which add up to the pair of lovers enduring the vicissitudes and joys of living. The joys and agonies of flesh, personal and gastronomic and the meaning and folly of life and the price of life etc. There are meanings lurking under the bed and in the wardrobe beyond analysis. That's not meant to sound pretentious--just to say you can't pin down steam but you can admire the way it whistles out of the kettle, floats round the room and disappears. I'd love to have written this one.
Janet

I like the technique of using the last few lines to start the beginning of the next part and well as the mixture of some longer with shorter lines, mainly broken as lines based on a rhyme.

The lack of a strong meter makes it sound too much like prose. The meter basically is not strong enough to hold my attention when the meaning refuses to make sense.

Clearly there is some couple fighting, but the parts throughout don't hold this fight together nor explain why they are fighting. I expect prose to tell me more about what is going on. The claim to poetry comes from the rhyme and the traditional jumble of ideas (often called "images") which confuse more than illuminate.

There is no strong idea. No message. Nothing to take away from the poem and put in the mind so that the poem can be enjoyably recalled.

I think this poem has a terrific meter. I couldn't bear the thought of analysing it but it's vital and emphatic. Just races along.

A pheasant farm where we watched a pheasant’s ascent
translate into a dent
on our automobile. Wham.
I bet they could make out even on the jam-cam
steam rising from the vent

of a wound dressed with sphagnum moss.
Bosom-boss.
The white line running all the way from the badger
to the gamekeeper-turned-poacher
who really couldn’t give a toss

One of my favourite bits.
Janet


[

I think there is much here that is brilliant, even genius. I admire the length of the poem, the difficult stanza, the coherence of the poem. I do not admire some of the sloppiest attempts at rhyme, which is neither slant nor rhyme, clear/years/dear in the very first stanza, fer chrissakes. I do not admire some of the enjambments which are used to undercut the flow of the poem and say to me, hey I'm just joking around here. But that's Muldoon, whose 800 poems only joke around. The last three lines are great.

Some clever stanzas, but much too long. I couldn't finish it, Jim.

Sorry.

G/W