particular world picture, any kind of ism, that insists on everything falling into
place very neatly ñ^5Rather like his ëHedgehogí from New Weather (1973) who ë[s]hares
its secret with no oneí,^6 Muldoon will not provide straight answers
and he has a prickly distrust of ëany particular world pictureí that
claims itself as authentic.
Muldoon moved to the United States in 1987. His subsequent
position away from Ireland and the obscurity of the public statement
of his work has led Clair Wills in Improprieties (1993) to notice how
responses to Muldoonís work tend to focus on his ëcharacteristic
enigmatic refusal to take up any public positioní, implying that his
poetry avoids addressing the larger political situation of Ireland.^7
Muldoonís ëanti-prescriptiveí and ironic pose often resides inbetween
two opposing views so that there always seem to be two Muldoons, or
a Muldoon who is in two places at once and has it both ways. This
writing strategy is connected with anti-foundational thought and
double-coding whereby two opposing positions are often held in
tension. The ëanti-prescriptiveí and the ëanti-foundationalí refuse
singular governing laws or principles, and operate in terms of a dis-
position or displacement where one frame of thinking moves to
another, and there is no firm ground on which to stand. It is important
to acknowledge that the strategy of ëdis-positioní is still a position of
sorts and the strength of Muldoonís tendency to have it both ways can
be questioned. Muldoonís duality can be understood in terms of
deterritorialization whereby the poetic speaker works against the
foundational and lays no claims to any singular position. It is therefore
interesting to consider further the displacement, dis-positions and the
double ëIí that arise in Muldoonís poems so as to ask what effects his
dual strategies have on the representation of identity and the poetic
voice.
Clair Wills notices how unlike Heaney, who took part in Civil
Rights marches in his younger days, Muldoonís adolescence was
5 Lynn Keller, ëAn Interview with Paul Muldooní, Contemporary Literature,
Vol.35, 1994, p.8.
6 Muldoon, ëHedgehogí, New Weather (London: Faber, 1973), p.36.
7 Wills, ëThe Politics of Poetic Formí, Improprieties: Politics and Sexuality in
Northern Irish Poetry (Oxford: University Press, 1993), p.16.