Yet my eye is drawn once again,
Almost against its wishes,
To the figure in the shadows,
Willowy, and clean-shaven,
As if he simply wandered in
Between mending that fuse
And washing the breakfast dishes.
--from "The Bearded Woman, by Ribera"
Sven Birkerts has said, "It is not usual for a poet of Muldoon's years to have an oeuvre disclosing significant shifts and evolutions. But Muldoon, more than most, is an artist in high flight from self-repetition and the deadening business of living up to created expectations." The body of work in Poems 1968-1998--a comprehensive gathering of Paul Muldoon's eight volumes---finds a great poet reinventing himself and recreating the business of poetry. The thirty-year effort of Muldoon's career thus far, is altogether like a fascinatingly mutable climate in which each freshening period brings---as his first collection was predictively titled---new weather.