David Jackson

Billy Collins Poet – What Dogs Think!

January 31, 2015January 16, 2015 by David Jackson

John Updike praised Collins for writing “lovely poems…Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides.” But Collins has offered a slightly different take on his appeal, admitting that his poetry is “suburban, it’s domestic, it’s middle class, and it’s sort of unashamedly that.”

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Two Demons Parse Your Fate | Poem by Ward Kelley

January 12, 2015 by David Jackson

Two Demons Parse Your Fate
Ward Kelley

Two demons parse your fate, not always clear if they correctly consigned your stiff soul.

You expect at first to hear raucous glee
concerning your weakness and tendency
to exaggerate all your attributes . . .
yet you discern little joy in their tones.

Soon they both shake their heads over the skill
of your race to misjudge every action –
they wonder how humans unattended
to each other’s needs can yet produce Art
which will even make two unholies weep.

You hear them pronounce, “Those not actively
participating in the craziness
of this life are, at times, driven insanely Artful
by tranquility.” Hiding brings brooding.

You now remember how you came to Art.
Do artists – when they fall outside the norm –
always flee the silence of their own souls?

Soon the demons agree: you who misjudge
nearly everything will be perfect at
judging your own Art . . . although only once
you’re dead.

Two demons, both you.

Irish Voices. Paul Muldoon. Poet. Saoirse (Freedom)

January 31, 2015January 9, 2015 by David Jackson

Paul Muldoon is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary poets. He was born in Portadown, County Armagh and raised near The Moy, in Northern Ireland. Muldoon’s work is full of paradox: playful but serious, elusive but direct, innovative but traditional. He uses traditional verse forms such as the sonnet, ballad, and dramatic monologue, but alters their length and basic structure, and uses rhyme and meter in new ways. His work is also notable for its layered use of conceit, allusion, and wit. The cryptic wordplay present in many poems has often been called Joycean, but Muldoon himself has cited lyric poets such as Frost, Thomas, and MacNeice as his major influences.

Muldoon is the youngest member of a group of Northern Irish poets—including Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, and Derek Mahon—which gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. As a student at Queen’s University, Muldoon studied under Heaney, and refined his own analytical and critical skills in weekly discussions with other poets. In 1971, at the age of nineteen, Muldoon completed his first short collection, Knowing My Place. Two years later, he published New Weather (1973), his first widely reviewed volume of poetry. The book secured Muldoon’s place among Ireland’s finest writers and helped establish his reputation as an innovative new voice in English-language poetry.