Paul MuldoonReseñas

New Christmas 23

A great collection of animal poetry but one which skewers towards male poets.

I’m glad I had seen the eight hour documentary “The Beatles: Get Back” before reading McCartney’s book. I gained a new respect for all four of the Beatles after watching the Peter Jackson film, and that helped me see and hear what Paul said in this book much more objectively. The book is really a wonderful peek into Paul’s world from the time he was in his early 20s until now into his 80s. Some of the friction between Paul and John is discussed here, not with any particular new insight, but with a sensitivity and emotion that only time can provide. I saw the Beatles in concert in Indianapolis in 1964 when I was 14-years-old, and reading Paul’s book gave me another appreciation for that privilege. This book is definitely a “must read” for any Paul McCartney fan and an “absolute read” for any Beatles fan.

Fun to read through. Paul’s quite a packrat, reproductions of lots of lyrics written on scraps of paper, of course, but also lots of other paper artifacts like papers from high school and funny little sketches. Mountains of photos from all times in his life. And the main thing is lyrics to many of his songs,each accompanied with recollections about writing the song or other memories that the song provoked. These comments are well written, he’s very well spoken and funny. I totally loved the book to start with but 800 pages in a couple weeks is a lot of anything, even something good. (Of course the majority of the pages are photos, it’s not 800 pages of text!)

Was Paul your fave Beatle? Do you enjoy reading song lyrics and being in on the creation? If not, you might want to skip this immense tome that covers A - K songs written by Lennon/McCartney (or McCartney/Lennon, depending on Paul's recollection of who wrote more of each) from “All My Loving” through “Kiss of Venus” (no, I don't remember it nor many Wings songs). There's some remarkable recollections of John and Paul's friendship, dating back to their teenage years, and of their ability to sit down, two boys with two guitars, and not get up until they had composed a song or two. His ambivalence about the grown-up John, his lashing attacks and lack of confidence, are attributed mostly to John's miserable childhood. Paul's, in contrast, was sunny until his mother died when he was in his early teens, but he still had his father and brother to keep him striving. There's very little about George and Ringo and about how John and Paul's partnership excluded them and caused George to leave the group. Paul's choices of his own favorites here – “I Saw her Standing There”, and “Here, There, and Everywhere” - pretty much match my own. Perusing this was time would be time well spent for any Beatles fan.

This would have been so much better for me if they song lyrics had been presented in chronological order. I’m actually fine with the choice to present the songs in alphabetical order but this is a huge book. Two volumes. Would it have been even a little bit hard to include a list of the songs in general chronologist order? No. It should have been done. Listing the albums where songs appeared would also have been nice but not at important. I would have appreciated a chronological list. Song title and year first published (and/or written) would have been sufficient for me.

I know the songs so well that reading the lyrics I can hear their music/sing along. That was the main draw for me of this book: the lyrics.

There is also lots of great additional material including biographical info, many photos of people and works in progress, and so much else. In addition to the song lyrics, it works as a biography, as a book on the creative process, etc. Different readers will focus on different parts and take away different things from the reading experience.

It definitely helps to be a Paul fan, a Paul & John fan, a Beatles fan, and most of all a fan of the music. Recommended for all/any of the above but not recommended for those with no interest in any of the above. This is a book for fans. I’m not a rabid fan but I’ve always liked Paul, especially since he went veg, and I’ve always enjoyed and admired the music, and some of the lyrics. “The Long and Winding Road” always makes me cry. I know the lyrics and the songs too can be found online. I’ve searched and listened to various songs and pieces of music many times. It’s nice to have all the McCartney lyrics in one place and this two volume set a a whole package. Fascinating content though at times I felt as though I was 13 again and reading a (very large) teen magazine. Usually, it seemed to have more substance though, thankfully.

It is heavy. If they’d tried to make it one volume it would have been unmanageable. The sleeve is nice. (This part reminds me of [book:The Complete Far Side, 1980–1994|50323]. It also needs two volumes in a sleeve. So did the [book:The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2 Vols w/Reading Glass|441499]. I am keeping the former for forever if I can. I just recently gave up the latter after owning it for over 50 years. It had sentimental value but was 50 years out of date and didn’t make the cut of only about 1,200 books left out of an original estimated 15,000.)

4-1/2 stars For what it is, it’s kind of brilliantly done. A half star off for not including a list of the songs in chronological order. Yes, I’ll keep mentioning that. I really liked it anyway. It’s unique so I rounded up my rating.

I should have known that I wouldn't be satisfied with simply borrowing a copy of The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present by Paul McCartney (with help from Paul Muldoon). Even though I've only had a chance to look at the first volume which covers his songs from A-K I know that this book set is one that I will most definitely be adding to my personal collection. Beautifully designed and executed, this is exactly what it purports to be: a collection of the lyrics that he's written from 1956 to the present day. I guess it must have been Paul Muldoon who suggested they arrange the songs alphabetically which was an excellent decision as it allows the reader to feel like they're sitting with Paul and hearing his reminiscences rather than a backlog of albums chronologically. Arranged into chapters by letter, each song lists the writer(s), vocal artist, recording studio, album, and year along with the entire lyrics. Following that is a short recollection from Paul about the story behind the song as well as various photographs and ephemera (some of which has never been seen before!). This is a gorgeous masterpiece of literature in my opinion. [A/N: And if you love a book that lays down flat then you're going to melt with rapture.] As you could probably guess, this is a 10/10 from me (and I haven't even gotten my hands on L-K yet!).

Paul Muldoon is a lover of language and its many forms, interpretations, and interminglings. In QUOOF, he explores animal sounds-as-language, punctuation, cultural word-use variations, and differences in English, from his native Northern Ireland and the United States. The titular poem refers to a private, family term for a hot water bottle, and the poet writes about taking the word into strange beds, not just as a literal object of warmth, but as a symbol of connection through communication. The word links him to his past, and to the future. In every poem, he takes language and symbolism to extremes, making fun and folly of it while still expressing the light and dark of human experience. QUOOF is a brilliant, playful, and at times absurd collection that adores and challenges language and our expression and understanding of it.

Although Muldoon's verse has a certain amount of fun in it and a good penchant for bringing in references from most likely whatever places he was in at the time of composition, I did not find the work to carry the kind of water the greatest of the greats carry, like e.e. cummings or Muldoon-praiser Seamus Heaney for that matter.

These brilliant, extravagant, and entertaining essays are based on Muldoon's Oxford Lectures on poetry. Subjecting the idea of the "end of the poem" to multiple interpretations, he uses these interpretations as springboards to detailed readings of just under twenty poems. His method uses associations, allusions, similarities, puns, influences, and wordplay to extract every possible shred of meaning from a poem. This is always entertaining, and if he sometimes oversteps normal reasonable bounds, he often creates an complicated web of reference to other poems, biography, and critical writings so compelling that I was swept along, if only by the sheer brilliance and buoyant intellectual fun of it all. All in all, one of the most entertaining and stimulating books of poetry criticism that I've read.½

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2171936.html

A collection of very dense, layered poems, first published in 1987, rooted in the author's experience in the small but deep-rooted world of Northern Ireland's cultural community. The title piece is above; the last poems in the book are a sequence imagining the author in the position of figures such as W.H. Auden, Salvador Dali and Louis MacNeice; most of them are short and end somewhat abruptly (though few have quite as vicious as sting as the title piece). All very thought-provoking.

This book is a collection of 15 lectures delivered over the course of five years at Oxford during Muldoon's tenure there as a professor of poetry. Each lecture is a close reading of a particular poem from the likes of Yeats, Pessoa, Marianne Moore, etc. As could be expected, some chapters are stronger than others (and some are quite brilliant, in fact), but overall it is a solid performance.

Same ISBN seems to have been used for 1994 edition and a subsequent edition including poems up to 1998

bemusing but marvellous, I love especially the 1st sestina, The Misfits, which is a marvel of cheeky rhyme and rule-bending (as ever)

Fiendish but seductive, these poems are woven together, seeming to suggest meaning at the same time as utterly rejecting any such thing.