unavowed engagement that his poetry may be seen to contain,^4 andexplicitly denied having an ‘engaged
perspective’.^5
Rawlinson goes on to state, ‘The authority of [the war poet’s] witness is
proportional to its dissociation from administrative objectification and from an
aesthetics of detachment.’^6 ‘An aesthetics of detachment’ is precisely what much
of Muldoon’s work, especially his early poetry (the volumes up to and including
Quoof(1983), which were written whilst Muldoon lived in Northern Ireland), is
particularly associated with: during his early reception, the word ‘hermetic’ became
a standard descriptor of his poetry.^7
Far from asking the reader to take certain (ethical) perceptions and arguments
from it, far from trying to convince us of certain truths, of the ‘authority’ of
its ‘witness’, Muldoon’s work is celebrated (and sometimes deplored) for its res-
istance to interpretation. His disorientingprocedures are frequently placed in
opposition to Heaney’s moral stability: ‘Where Heaney gives earnest witness, Mul-
doon the ironist ducks and weaves, endlessly evasive, polyvocal and outlandish’;^8
‘Muldoon’s...playfulness is in sharp contrast to Heaney’s often earnest tone’;^9
or, less admiringly, ‘Heaney’s poetry seems unforced, deep, natural...Muldoon’s
is tricky, clever, tickled by its own knowingness.’^10 Critics applaud his poetry’s
ability to forgo referential stability, its eluding of the restrictions that such stability
can entail; they celebrate its ‘rejection of the notion of stable or univocal origins
which...are linked to a conservative politics’,^11 or its ‘question[ing of] its own
authority along with origins, foundations, heritage, precedent, preceptor and ped-
igree’.^12 The Muldoon suggested by such comments could not be further from
claiming Rawlinson’s ‘moral authority’ and ‘witness’.
(^4) Asked by John Haffenden whether he ‘detect[s] a strong moral drive in [his] work’, Muldoon
responds, ‘It’s apparent to me as a reader of the poems inNew Weather[his first collection, from 1973]
in particular, many of which I don’t like because of exactly that tone’ (‘Paul Muldoon’, interviewed
by John Haffenden, in John Haffenden (ed.),Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation with John Haffenden
(London: Faber, 1981), 135). 5
Ibid. 137: ‘I might appear to be evasive. But I don’t have committed beliefs—it’s as simple as
that.’ 6
7 Rawlinson,British Writing of the Second World War, 14.
See e.g. Heaney, ‘The Mixed Marriage’, inPreoccupations, 212; Dillon Johnston, ‘The Go-
Between of Recent Irish Poetry’, in Michael Kenneally (ed.),Cultural Contexts and Literary Idioms
in Contemporary Irish Literature(Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988),passim; John Goodby,
‘Hermeneutic Hermeticism: Paul Muldoon and the Northern Irish Poetic’, in C. C. Barfoot (ed.),
In Black and Gold: Contiguous Traditions in Post-War British and Irish Poetry(Amsterdam: Rodopi,
1994), 8 passim.
9 David Wheatley, ‘An Irish Poet in America’,Raritan, 18/4 (Spring 1999), 145–6.
Goodby, ‘Hermeneutic Hermeticism’, 139.
(^10) John Carey, ‘The Stain of Words’, inSunday Times, 21 June 1987, 56.
(^11) Clair Wills,Improprieties: Politics and Sexuality in Northern Irish Poetry(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992), 194. 12
Edna Longley, ‘ ‘‘When Did You Last See Your Father?’’ Perceptions of the Past in Northern Irish
Writing1965–1985’,inTheLivingStream:LiteratureandRevisionisminIreland(Newcastle-upon-Tyne:
Bloodaxe, 1994), 167.