The great Paul Muldoon will be reading at Labyrinth Books in Princeton on Tuesday to celebrate the release of a new, career-spanning anthology of his work — Selected Poems 1968-2014.
We corresponded by email and the result is this story in today’s Time Off. But here is a question and answer that did not make the story, but is worth considering in the Age of Trump and the reaction and intolerance that is rampant. This certainly comes out in the aggressive anti-intellectualism of the Trump supporters and others on the right, but also in the boorish and blindered behavior of many on the left. There is a tendency toward certainty rather than inquiry that is deadly for art and politics and places those of us working in the arts in peril. My question to Muldoon, however, had nothing to do with the political moment. His answer, though, captures this zeitgeist and makes it clear that it is not something we can escape.
HK: Poetry, as an art, is both incredibly popular (there probably are more people writing poetry today than at almost any point in history) and something that has been thrust to the cultural margins. Why do you think that is and what impact does this seeming contradiction have on the work that is ultimately produced?
Muldoon: There are a lot of people writing poetry but, I fear, too few reading it. The fact is that anyone can hang out a shingle with the word “poet” written on it in neon. We don’t need to offer any credentials. It’s a bit like hanging out a shingle as a “psychic.” That’s not true, for the most part, of the physician or the programmer. Leaving aside that discussion for another day, I see the present moment in US history as an important one for the poet. We need to be among those willing to try to “purify the dialect of the tribe,” as Mallarme put it. There’s certainly a lot of work to be done in that vein. I think it’s only a question of time before a writer is censored in this country. Perhaps even imprisoned. Then we’ll see PEN having to go to bat not for Azerbaijani or Albanian but American poets.
Send me an e-mail.
Hank Kalet 