Paul Muldoon’s first major publication following his move to the USA in 1987 was the vast and complex book of enigmas that is
Madoc – A Mystery. Developing, often to an extravagant degree, many of the formal and thematic characteristics of his previous work – a fascination with alternative lives, native American cultures, sex, drugs, violence, expanded structures, narrative and semantic involution, the idiosyncratic renewal of traditional forms – the book delighted many and irritated others, including some of those who had championed Muldoon’s work from the beginning. The long title poem which dominates the collection (all but 11 of the 257 pages) is concerned with an account of the planned utopian voyage of the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey to the Americas in…
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Citation: Phillips, Ivan. "Madoc: A Mystery". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 August 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3776, accessed 25 November 2024.]
