Howdie-Skelp
Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon delivers a sharp wake-up call with his witty and thought-provoking fourteenth collection, Howdie-Skelp.
A "howdie-skelp" is the slap in the face a midwife gives a newborn. It's a wake-up call. A call to action.
In this collection, Muldoon presents a nightmarish remake of The Waste Land, an elegy for his fellow Northern Irish poet Ciaran Carson, a heroic crown of sonnets that responds to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a translation from the ninth-century Irish, and a Yeatsian sequence of ekphrastic poems that call into question the very idea of an "affront" to good taste.
Muldoon's Howdie-Skelp showcases his trademark wit, political insight, and mastery of form, cementing his position as one of the most important voices in contemporary Irish and American poetry. A must-read for fans of twenty-first century poetry and Irish literature.
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Content
Wagtail
American Standard
A Ruin
Shoot 'Em Up
Damsons
Bramleys, Not Grenadiers
23 Banned Poems
The Dirty Protest
A Postcard from Saint Bart's
Mayday
Anonymous: The Vikings
Clegs and Midges
The Fly
The Pangolin, Or Vasty
The Ice Fishers
Binge
Cow Moose, Route 125, Ripton, Vermont
Chipmunk
The Triumph
Salonica
The Banisters
The Sheet
Le Jongleur
An Item
Oscar Wilde at the Pavilion Hotel
Viral
A Bull
Plaguey Hill
Acknowledgments
