genetic cross-breed from the coupling of the female horse and male
donkey, can be seen as consigned to barrenness by the conflicting pull
of its pedigrees which can be read as an extended parable for life in
the hybrid state of the North of Ireland.^11 According to both Kendall
and Wills, Muldoonís poetry is often in two places at once or one
place twice, and they view this duality as a symptom of the divided
culture, territory and consciousness of the North of Ireland. This is an
important reading that acknowledges the schizophrenic culture into
which Muldoon was born. Hybridity and dividedness, duality and
splitting need to be discussed in more detail in order to ask what are
the politics of Muldoonís poems, and to consider whether mule-
ishness should be understood simply in terms of sterility.
Gravity and Levity
In an interview with Clair Wills (1986) Muldoon has commented:
ëThatís what the process of writing is about. Itís about opening
himself or herself, to the floodgates, what itís about is discovering the
extent of limits, the confinement, the controlling of readings, of
possible readings.í^12 Muldoonís terms are conspicuously psycho-
analytic as he imagines opening himself to the floodgates in an
exploration of liminality. Muldoonís comment notices the merging
(ëopening the floodgatesí) and splitting (ërecognizing the limitsí) that
is part of the process of writing and identification yet his comments
provide no point of resolution between the two. In two places at once,
in one place twice or eroding the line between different ways of being
and understanding, Muldoon opens himself to alterity or ëthe otherí.
The paradox here is that Muldoon takes up a degree of mastery
as he advocates ëthe controlling of readingsí. Muldoon speaks of
11 Wills, Reading Paul Muldoon, pp.46ñ7. Tim Kendall, Paul Muldoon
(Bridgend: Seren, 1996), p.49.
12 ëAn Interview with Paul Muldooní, Clair Wills, Nick Jenkins and John
Lancaster, Oxford Poetry, 3:1, Winter 1986/7, 14ñ20.