Public Eye

Paul Muldoon, the County Armagh poet, Princeton professor and newly named poetry editor of The New Yorker, came to the Claremont Graduate University Monday night for a reading with fellow poet Molly Peacock.

I'd gotten to know Paul a little bit through his work with the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize at Claremont, the organizing committee of which I sit on, and because we shared the same brilliant poetry teacher -- Paul at Queen's College in Belfast, me at Berkeley.

That, and we both write not only verse but lyrics with rock 'n' roll bands.

End of comparisons, 'cause Paul has been described by The Times Literary Supplement as "the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War," and I have . . . not.

It was a fantastic night in the backyard of CGU President Robert Klitgaard's home as those of us on the Arts and Humanities Advisory Board of the university gear up to create a year-'round poetry presence to complement the annual Tufts hoopla.

Poetry -- it's the best balm in hard times. In good times, too, so stick with us.

I was thinking of this poem by Paul in this 46th October since the Cuban Missile Crisis:

Cuba

My eldest sister arrived home that morning
In her white muslin evening dress.
'Who the hell do you think you are
Running out to dances in next to nothing?
As though we hadn't enough bother
With the world at war, if not at an end.'
My father was pounding the breakfast-table.

'Those Yankees were touch and go as it was--
If you'd heard Patton in Armagh--
But this Kennedy's nearly an Irishman
So he's not much better than ourselves.
And him with only to say the word.
If you've got anything on your mind
Maybe you should make your peace with God.'

I could hear May from beyond the curtain.
'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
I told a lie once, I was disobedient once.
And, Father, a boy touched me once.'
'Tell me, child. Was this touch immodest?
Did he touch your breasts, for example?'
'He brushed against me, Father. Very gently.'