Paul Muldoon: “Curse the Pope of Rome”

Extended post on Oxblog by Patrick Belton about Paul Muldoon, specifically, and Irish poets in general.

I heard Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill read her work at the Ireland House, here in New York. She only writes in Irish. “I can’t hear the poetry in English.” So Nuala talked about her process, she described what was going on with her when writing each poem, she gave a brief synopsis of the poem, all in English – and then she launched into the Irish language for the poem itself. And dammitall, if you couldn’t get her exact meaning.

Patrick at Oxblog: You must ask Muldoon out for a pint, and then tell us all how it goes.

Thanks for a very unexpected post – a topic which is very dear to my heart.

Here’s a bit of Paul Muldoon:

“The Sightseers”

My father and mother, my brother and sister
and I, with uncle Pat, our dour best-loved uncle,
had set out that Sunday afternoon in July
in his broken-down Ford

not to visit some graveyard — one died of shingles,
one of fever, another’s knees turned to jelly —
but the brand-new roundabout at Ballygawley,
the first in mid-Ulster.

Uncle Pat was telling us how the B-Specials
had stopped him one night somewhere near Ballygawley
and smashed his bicycle

and made him sing the Sash and curse the Pope of Rome.
They held a pistol so hard against his forehead
there was still the mark of an O when he got home.