3 Paul Muldoon, Partition and Hybridity
Two places at once was it, or one place twice?^1Discussing Heaneyís poetry, deterritorialization was understood in
terms of the tension between earth and air; being grounded and taking
flight. Building on previous debate, there is a notable tension within
Muldoonís poetry between gravity and transcendence. Gravity can be
understood in terms of a singular or rooted thinking that attracts a
body towards the centre of the earth.^2 It also carries meanings of
seriousness or being grave as opposed to transcendence, which may be
thought in terms of hilarity or as that which defies gravity. The
imaginative flights undertaken by Heaney and Paulin can be under-
stood alongside the necessity for levity in the work of Muldoon.
Assertions that Muldoon is simply a postmodern poet whose poetry is
merely ëwhimsicalí can be contested to provide a reading of Muldoon
that, given a political inflection, will think his duality in terms of post-
colonial strategies, while once more questioning the relationship
between aesthetics and politics.^3
Muldoon can hardly answer to charges of ignoring the political in
his poetry when he has written poems such as ëAnseoí.^4 However, his
statement that he is ëanti-prescriptiveí has particular resonance within
the colonial context of poetry from the North of Ireland. In an
interview with Lynn Keller, Muldoon says:
Iím a person who can see some value in a great many of the theories that come
floating by. What I resist very strenuously is the superimposing of any1 Paul Muldoon, ëTwiceí, The Annals of Chile (London: Faber, 1994), p.12.
2 Oxford Concise English Dictionary, ed., Della Thompson (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 9th edn., 1995), p.594.
3 Clair Wills, Reading Paul Muldoon (Manchester: Bloodaxe, 1998), p.9.
4 Muldoon, ëAnseoí from Why Brownlee Left (1980), Muldoon, New and
Selected Poems 1988ñ1994 (London: Faber, 1996), p.48.