Making hay: Paul Muldoon and pastoral

• Published in: Irish studies review Vol. 19; no. 3; pp. 307 - 320
• Main Author: Twiddy, Iain
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 01.08.2011
• Subjects: Death; epic; Family; Fathers; Hay; Marriage; Muldoon; Northern Ireland; pastoral; Peace; Poetry; Virgil; War; Youth
• ISSN: 0967-0882; 1469-9303
• DOI: 10.1080/09670882.2011.592767

In his 1998 collection Hay, Paul Muldoon turns to Virgil for personal guidance through what he calls his 'crise/d'un certain âge', but also for help in negotiating problems of national significance. For Muldoon, Virgil is the poet of aftermath, whose double perspectives allow him to examine the interaction of pastoral and epic, legacy and potential. In a number of eclogic and georgic pieces, as well as two small-scale epics, Hay foregrounds the relationship between pastoral (retreat, peace, domesticity) and epic (adventure, war, heroism) in order to consider three Virgilian kinds of aftermath. Following marriage and fatherhood, and the end of youth, Muldoon examines whether the settled life can retain its appeal against the force of the epic. After the death of his father, Muldoon imagines himself as Aeneas, exploring alternative lives, and the responsibilities and feelings that follow mourning, in terms of the legacy of the family and homeland. Thirdly, Hay takes up the persistence of grievances in the political realm, and scrutinises the responsibilities of pastoral poetry, in looking to the prospect of peace in Northern Ireland in the 1990s.