Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve given up on Paul Muldoon’s new collection Joy in Service on the Rue Tagore. And the reason?
Partly because I’ve no idea in terms of what’s going on in most of the poems, but largely because they read as if the poet has sat down with a copy of a rhyming dictionary and just plucked words from it regardless of context or meaning. And there’s page after page of the stuff. Yes, I know some of it is clever, but I think the pursuit of rhyme has just gone too far…
Harsh, I know; but that’s my reader experience.
Ian Gouge - Writer 