Quoof

by Paul Muldoon

'How often have I carried our family word for the hot water bottle to a strange bed...' from 'Quoof'

Genres: Poetry, Irish Literature, Ireland

64 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1983

About the author

Born in Northern Ireland, Muldoon currently resides in the US and teaches at Princeton University. He held the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University from 1999 through 2004. In September 2007, Muldoon became the poetry editor of The New Yorker.

Awards:
1992: Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Madoc: A Mystery
1994: T. S. Eliot Prize for The Annals of Chile
1997: Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry for New Selected Poems 1968–1994
2002: T. S. Eliot Prize (shortlist) for Moy Sand and Gravel
2003: Griffin Poetry Prize (Canada) for Moy Sand and Gravel
2003: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Moy Sand and Gravel
2004: American Ireland Fund Literary Award
2004: Aspen Prize
2004: Shakespeare Prize

Reviews

[Rob McMonigal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Last year, I read and was conflicted in my thoughts about a book of Paul Muldoon poems I read last year, Horse Latitudes. It took me awhile to read another, partly because I had to ILL it, but now that I've read a second set of his poems, I am as confused as ever.

As I said to my friend Noah, who knows of Muldoon for his work with Warren Zevon, the big problem I have is that I love the way Muldoon plays with words, but I'm not overly fond of how he puts them together, if that makes any sense at all. By this I mean that the subjects of his poems, frankly, don't really interest me and no amount of technical brilliance can overcome that for me.

Some poems are enjoyable, such as "Trance":

"My mother opens the scullery door
on Christmas Eve, 1954,
to empty the dregs
of the tea-pot on the snowy flags.
A wind out of the Siberia
carries such voices as will carry
through to the kitchen--

Somewhat mutters a flame from lichen
and eats the red-and-white Fly Agaric
while the others hunker in the dark,
taking it in turn
to drink his mind-expanding urine.
One by one their reindeer
nuzzle in.

My mother slams the door
on her star-cluster of dregs
and packs me off to bed.
At 2 a.m. I will clamber downstairs
to glimpse the red-and-white
up the chimney, my new rocking-horse
as yet unsteady on its legs."

I really enjoy the last stanza, but the whole poem is tempered by the second stanza which seems rather lost in space compared to the rest. This happens again and again, and hits its nadir in this collection in the rambling, self-indulgent, over twenty page "The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants" which does have its moments, such as the lines:

"He means, of course, an Oglala
Sioux busily tracing the family tree
of an Ulsterman who had some hand
in the massacre at Wounded Knee."

or

"The more a man has the more a man wants,
the same I don't think true.
For I never met a man with one black eye
who ever wanted two."

It's things like that which keep me coming back to Muldoon, hoping I'll find a collection that puts those types of clever lines into a whole that I can like without reservation. Quoof, a short volume at only 64 pages (24 of which are from the last poem), was not the one. However, if you find the style attractive, it's worth a look. (Library, 04/08)

Trebby's Take: I'm finding Muldoon a frustrating man to pin down. See what you think for yourself.

[Ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

a far more satisfying installment of paul than I'm used to I'm slowly coming round to him in fits and starts this is early paul he's quite heaney-esque in his parts despite what certain Patersons may say about a permanent recognisable character ok that's not fair because it Is Clearly Him but he's not so cloying as I found with the Horse Latitudes. Much of this was acceptable and even interesting here and there. A huge long poem in the back with honestly quite remarkable political feelings I found before, I think with Moy Sand and Gravel that he's often at his best when he's writing of the political, unusually, perhaps because he's so elusive with it. Still I'll try a little more

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I need to do some research and come back to the final poem in this collection, as I know comparatively little about the Troubles and a lot of the references went over my head, though this is to my own discredit not the poet's.

[Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would 5 stars if I were in a better mood, but 5 star poetry books are rare, and frankly I am less forgiving of poetry than novels.

Truth: I love Muldoon and think he's pretty great. And I don't care that I don't always understand his work. I respond to the best of it. This is some of his best work. "A Trifle", short as it is, contains as much as the long poem that closes this book, though that one, elusive though it may be, features some great puns and otherwise startling moments. Muldoon makes me love poetry again and in a culture where the trend sways toward tedious academic poetry, this is really saying something.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you go into the book not expecting to "get" everything and just enjoy the craft, you'll find plenty to appreciate. The end-rhymes alone are marvels: lichened/legend, sister/posture, story/sorbet, entrails/chanterelles, manure/ammonia. The poems, while they work in (mostly) complete sentences with fairly regular syntax, are difficult to follow. Here, for instance, is all eight lines of the poem "Big Foot":

Comes, if he comes at all, among sumach
and birches, stops half-
way across the clearing ... Wood-smoke,
the cabin where you mourn your wife,

where, darkening the tiny window,
is the fur coat
you promised her when she was twenty
or twenty-one, you forget.

I don't deign to get this poem, but I like a lot about it: the mashup of cryptozoology and personal tragedy, the way-off-rhyme of window/twenty, the mystery of the wife (I assume the mourning is of death, but it could just as well be divorce) and the fur coat covering the window, blocking the "you" from seeing Big Foot.

It's a weird book, but masterful. The last line/word of the book is "Huh," which denotes both confusion and fascination. That's about right.

Oh, gotta love the magenta cover, too.

[Francisca · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh what a difference the world creates. right after giving The Annals Of Chile only one star, this comes along.

[Maddie Margioni · Rating 3 out of 5]

some people might love the playing with language he does but i just want some poems with recognizable words

[J Grimsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this and for a quick read it is understandable and the images/ words are more transparant than the writing of Seamus Heaney to an old man based in England

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

unexpected amounts of mushrooms

[Marisol Boyle Gomez · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Sightseers and Quoof are fantastic so yum

[Malachy · Rating 5 out of 5]

idk man i just kinda loved it.

[Rima · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quoof uncovers the tensions and attachments to the poet's childhood, family and place. Muldoon's poems reveal how the body is not only overtly sexualised during the Irish Troubles but throughout history.

[Sidney · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was nice, for some reason (I think his name) I was expecting something more traditional, and so was surprised at what I found. some very nice, funny, poems. My favorite was "A Trifle" (page 31), in which during an evacuation from an office block because of a bomb scare, the evacuees are held up by a woman determined not to leave her half eaten trifle behind.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Muldoon is a favorite poet of mine. And he has a beautiful voice, which I try to conjure up as I read his poems.

[Rauan · Rating 5 out of 5]

wild, crazy, surreal Muldoon. without much of the game-playing we see in later work.

[Simon Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Need an accompaniment for each poem - so many layers!