First U.S. edition and first printing. Hardcover. 261 pages. A long form poem

First U.S. edition and first printing. Hardcover. 261 pages. A long form poem from this acclaimed Irish writer who won a Pulitzer Prize for his collection "Moy Sand and Gravel" as well numerous other awards for other books. A clean very near fine copy in cloth boards and in a very near fine dust jacket.

New York. 1991. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Edition. Very Good in

New York. 1991. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0374195579. 261 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting: ‘Bull Dance, Mandan O-Kee-Pa Ceremony, ' by George Catlin, 1832. keywords: Europe Ireland Literature Poetry World Literature. DESCRIPTION-In Madoc: A Mystery, Paul Muldoon has brought to bear all his chimerical gifts-for cinematic elision and metamorphosis, for language games, for sheer verbal brinksmanship-producing a poem about history, philosophy, art, sex, that stands at the absolute forefront of contemporary poetry in English. In the summer of 1794, the poet-philosophers Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey hit grand scheme: they would emigrate to America and establish a utopian community on the banks of the Susquehanna-a place chosen mostly for the ‘metricality' of its name. This pantisocratic plan came to nothing and the idea was The long title poem of Madoc: A Mystery begins with a very Coleridgean ‘what if': What if these youthful poets had indeed crossed the Atlantic and tried to set up their ideal society in the woods of northern Pennsylvania, just outside the village of Ulster? What then? Madoc: A Mystery offers a version of events drawn from the mind's eye of one of Southey's putative descendants, South, whose unreliability as a narrator is matched by his somewhat quirky reading of the history of Western thought. The result, in the words of The Times Literary Supplement, is ‘a dazzling achievement. ' inventory #15332.