Quote

The point of poetry is to be acutely discomforting, to prod and provoke, to poke us in the eye, to punch us in the nose, to knock us off our feet, to take our breath away.

Paul Muldoon

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Paul Muldoon
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: June 20
Author
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Paul Muldoon
Eye
Knock
Away
Nose
Take
Noses
Prod
Breath
Acutely
Breaths
Provoke
Poetry
Poke
Feet
Punch
Point
Provoking

More quotes by Paul Muldoon

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It's not as if I'm trying to write crossword puzzles to which one might find an answer at the back of the book or anything like that.
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Form is a straitjacket in the way that a straitjacket was a straitjacket for Houdini.
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Your average pop song or film is a very sophisticated item, with very sophisticated ways of listening and viewing that we have not really consciously developed over the years - because we were having such a good time
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What I try to do is to go into a poem - and one writes them, of course, poem by poem - to go into each poem, first of all without having any sense whatsoever of where it's going to end up
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I certainly am interested in accessibility, clarity, and immediacy.
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I believe that these devices like repetition and rhyme are not artificial, that they're not imposed, somehow, on the language.
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The ground swell is what’s going to sink you as well as being what buoys you up. These are clichés also, of course, and I’m sometimes interested in how much one can get away with.
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Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond - had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.
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Confusion is what we're living with - not being able to make sense of what's happening to us from day to day. Whereas making sense is what we're aiming for - making sense.
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Of course, you can't legislate for how people are going to read.
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I do a lot of readings.
Paul Muldoon