Sir, - it is seldom I agree with Brian Lynch's dicta, but with one point in, his review of Paul Muldoon's Ned Selected Poems. I am in complete accord.
Whether Paul Muldoon is the cleverest poet ever to come out of this island, I cannot say, but that his Mary Earl Powers elegy is one of the most deeply felt expressions of the Irish imagination in the latter half of this century, there can be no doubt. To read this long and moving poem is to enter into an understanding of intimacy and absolute loss that has seldom been achieved in contemporary poetry anywhere. Yours, etc.,
Ballinfoyle Park,
Galway