"The Poetry of Paul Muldoon" introduces the general reader to some of the main critical discussions surrounding Muldoon's work. One of the main questions burning from his poetry is that of art's complicity in suffering. Answering this political question creates some of Muldoon's best poems because, as this critical work illustrates, they are so deeply self-indicting.

If sometimes Muldoon insists that art has a positive role to play, at other times he states that it is of no use whatsoever, and merely feeds off the carnage. This book shows how, for this Pulitzer Prize winner, art should not merely repeat the devastation of the world - although he is afraid that it does, and engages in bitter moral despair that makes his poems among the very best any contemporary poet has written.

"The Poetry of Paul Muldoon" unearths difficult questions of form with a metaphysical significance that is suitable to our times.