[Paul Muldoon has written] elegantly turned out pastorals in Mules. Here, every cowpat is carefully placed just where you have to notice it for authenticity's sake, yet it is never in the way of a smooth effect. In an eerily subtle study of homosexuality (or so I assume) at his school, Muldoon's snaffled, laconic casualness leads to crude action…. (p. 486)

If this poem—called 'How to Play Championship Tennis'—for reasons of subject-matter and tone sounds a bit Larkinish, more often Muldoon resembles a sleeker, Irish Robert Frost. His frame of reference is earthy, sly, obliquely religious and calculated to astonish as much as it is to please. Understatement is Muldoon's main line, though he deals with equal efficiency in the unexpected. The title poem ends amazingly on a Wordsworthian note. The mule born of Sam Parsons's jackass and Muldoon's father's mare might have sprung from the earth...