SOURCE: Quinlan, Kieran. Review of Selected Poems: 1968-1986, by Paul Muldoon. World Literature Today 63, no. 1 (winter 1989): 104.

In the following review, Quinlan offers a positive assessment of Selected Poems: 1968-1986.

“Kaleidoscopic,” “visionary,” and “charismatic” (the words used on the book jacket [of Selected Poems: 1968-1986] by as sensible an Ulsterman as Seamus Heaney) are all terms frequently applied to Paul Muldoon's work and aptly descriptive of its main thrust—which is to say that the poems by this relatively new voice from Northern Ireland are not always easily accessible, even when they are at their most inspiring. Still, there is a marked development from the tentativeness of the items selected from New Weather (1973) to the extreme confidence of those from Meeting the British (1987).

As one might expect of a writer from Muldoon's region of the world, the nuances of political commitment are never too far from the poet's consciousness...