NIGHT SKYE M.a.g.a.z.i.n.e
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Paul Muldoon has just won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Night Skye Magazine is honored that he has given us permission to
include his work.
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Photo credit:
Denise Applewhite,
PrincetonUniversity
Pineapples and Pomegranates
In Memory of Yehuda Amichai
To think that, as a boy of thirteen, I would grapple
with my first pineapple,
its exposed breast
setting itself as another test
of my willpower, knowing in my bones
that it stood for something other than itself alone
while having absolutely no sense
of its being a worldwide symbol of munificence.
Munificence?right? Not munitions, if you understand
where I'm coming from. As if the open hand
might, for once, put paid
to the hand grenade
in one corner of the planet.
I'm talking about pineapples?right??not pomegranates.
~ from his book Moy Sand and Gravel
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Muldoon wins 2003 Pulitzer Prize for poetry
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Paul Muldoon, the Howard Clark '21
University Professor in the Humanities at Princeton, today won the
2003 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his latest collection, "Moy Sand
and Gravel."
Muldoon is also a professor in the Council of the Humanities and
creative writing and chair of the Fund for Irish Studies. "Moy Sand
and Gravel" is his 25th volume of poetry and the ninth collection of
his poems.
"It's a terrific honor," said Muldoon, who said he was shoveling
snow when he got the call from his publisher. "It comes as a
complete shock and surprise."
The Pulitzer Prize for poetry recognizes a distinguished volume of
original verse by an American author. The poems in "Moy Sand and
Gravel," published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2002, take readers
from Muldoon's native Ireland in the 1950s to present-day New
Jersey. In its review of the book, Publishers Weekly said Muldoon
is "one of the English-speaking world's most acclaimed poets still at
the top of his slippery, virtuosic game."
The book also recently was short-listed for the international Griffin
Prize for Excellence in Poetry. In addition, it was the winter 2002
choice of the Poetry Book Society for the best book of poems
published in that season.
"It's certainly well deserved," said poet C.K. Williams, who also is
on Princeton's creative writing faculty and won a Pulitzer in 2000.
"He's a very unique poet. The fact that he wins prizes on both sides
of the Atlantic is great proof of that uniqueness -- he's valued as
much in the United Kingdom and Ireland as he is here."
"One of the nice things about it is that several of my colleagues at
Princeton are Pulitzer Prize winners," Muldoon said. "I'm delighted
for my sake and for Princeton's sake." Other Pulitzer Prize winners
on the creative writing program faculty include poet Yusef
Komunyakaa and authors John McPhee and Toni Morrison.
Muldoon was born in Northern Ireland and moved to the United
States in 1987. He joined the Princeton faculty as a lecturer in 1990
and was named a full professor in 1995. He directed the
University's Program in Creative Writing from 1993 until 2002. In
1999, he was elected to also serve as a professor of poetry at the
University of Oxford.
