Analysis Of Clair Wills Reading Paul Muldoon

Literary critic Antony Harrison proposes that the reality of the text is conceptual. Such proposition allows for a multiplicity of interpretations or “a free play of ideas” (380) on the part of the reader. In this respect, readers underline certain linguistic devices, which are used by the author, that appeal the most to them and interpret their development throughout the reading process. On a similar note, Greenblatt posits that “the work of art is itself the product of a set of manipulations, some of them our own …many others undertaken in the construction of the original work” (The Greenblatt Reader 27-28). It could be inferred thus that a work of art emerges from the dialectics of negotiation and exchange between the author and the different
However, both works give a “thorough assessment of a significant poet” (Holdridge 4) and both writers illustrate the “complexities” (Holdridge 1) readers confront in his poetry. Kendall believes that Muldoon’s poetry reveals certain difficulties though his poetic technique manipulates readers and reassures them that all is well, which provokes bewilderment in them. Muldoon exclaims, “part of writing is about manipulation – leaving [readers] high and dry, in some corner of a terrible party, where I’ve nipped out through the bathroom window” (Wills, Jenkins and Lanchester 19-20). Muldoon’s poetry is thus double-edged as it always deceives readers by its apparent “sense of smoothness and readability, only to proceed to discomfort, provoke, confuse, and fascinate” (Broom 205). It “often seems intentionally obscure” and its highly accomplished style is often “bewildering” (Holdridge
Poets seek to be regarded as no less important than any of these since the “public health of the nation would suffer if poets didn’t resist the insidious impulse of others to use language to their own ends.” Poets should have a responsibility towards language: making it clear not obscure and getting rid of the “garbage” wherever it may be “in the advertising slogan, the newspaper article, the politician’s speech, the preacher’s sermon”