SOURCE: McCarthy, Thomas. Review of The Prince of the Quotidian, by Paul Muldoon. Eire-Ireland 30, no. 4 (winter 1996): 188-90.

In the following review, McCarthy discusses Muldoon's decision to write a new poem for every day in 1992 and praises the subsequent collection of the works in The Prince of the Quotidian.

In the New Year of 1992 Paul Muldoon decided to write a poem every day. He was newly arrived at Princeton where he had become director of the Creative Writing Program. The result is this forty-two page poetry journal [The Prince of the Quotidian]. If the project sounds Louis MacNiece-like, that is no coincidence. Muldoon, more than any other Ulster writer, has inherited many of the qualities and stylistic mannerisms of MacNiece.

And what are those qualities? Well, an acquisitive intelligence, a comfort with the detritus of modern life, an ability to absorb non-Irish experience without the tendency to flee back...