opening oneself to the floodgates, but he also hopes to discover ëthe
extent of limits.í As he notes in his Bateson lecture (1998):
Now you may detect a certain discord or discrepancy in that position, or
positions, Iím espousing here. On the one hand Iím arguing for the supremacy
of ëunknowingí, for the Keatsian model of poet as conduit, channel, the ëbellyí
from which a poem is ventriloquised, the ëchameleon poetí, the poet whose
imagination, he wrote, ëit has no self ñ it is everything and nothing.í On the
other Iím arguing for the almost total ëknowingí of Robert Frost, a ëknowingí
which Iíve been at pains to substantiate. The point to which Iíve been getting
round is that itís the poetís job to take into account, as best he or she is able, all
possible readings of the poem.^13On the one hand, Muldoon leans towards a Keatsian ënegative
capabilityí, ëwhen man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries,
doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reasoní, whereby
a distrust of authenticity becomes an artistic and political
responsibility that is critical and sceptical. On the other hand, he
draws on the ëknowingí of Robert Frost in his reading of ëThe Silken
Tentí.^14 Here, Muldoon answers Heaneyís example of Frost that is
mentioned in his Oxford lecture ëAbove the Brimí (1995), and in
which Heaney describes Frostís ability as a tightrope walker to tread a
line, perhaps a ëconduití or ëchannelí, a middle space between ëbuoy-
ancyí and ëgravity.í According to Heaney, Frost writes ëabove the
brimí, not as an escapologist who flies in the face of reason but as a
poet who thinks at the limit in an attempt to inhabit a ërefreshing
planeí, recognizing the extent of limits rather than moving to any
utopian beyond.^15 Muldoonís dis-position between Keats and Frost is
torn between a romantic and imaginative flight into uncertainty and
doubt, and a knowing awareness of the limits of transcendence. That
is, between Heaneyís Hercules and Antaeus or transcendence and
gravity.
13 Muldoon, F.W. Bateson Memorial Lecture, Getting Round: Notes Towards an
Ars Poeticaí, Oxford, 19 February 1998, Essays in Criticism, Vol.XLVIII,
April 1998, No.2, pp.119ñ20.
14 Ibid., p.109. Cf. ëLetter from John Keats to George and Tom Keats, 21
December 1817, Romanticism: An Anthology, ed., Duncan Wu (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1994), p.1015. Cf. Wills, Reading Paul Muldoon, p.14.
15 Seamus Heaney, ëAbove the Brim: On Robert Frostí, Salmagundi, No.s 88ñ9,
Fall 1990 ñ Winter 1991, p.283.