Howdie-Skelp

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon delivers a sharp wake-up call with his witty and thought-provoking fourteenth collection, Howdie-Skelp. A "howdie-skelp" is the slap in the face a midwife gives a newborn. It's a wake-up call. A call to action. In this collection, Muldoon presents a nightmarish remake of The Waste Land, an elegy for his fellow Northern Irish poet Ciaran Carson, a heroic crown of sonnets that responds to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a translation from the ninth-century Irish, and a Yeatsian sequence of ekphrastic poems that call into question the very idea of an "affront" to good taste. Muldoon's Howdie-Skelp showcases his trademark wit, political insight, and mastery of form, cementing his position as one of the most important voices in contemporary Irish and American poetry. A must-read for fans of twenty-first century poetry and Irish literature.