Close Reading of Muldoon pp. 16-17

Kate Litterer here. First, so sorry that this is so long. I’m going to imitate Shannon’s investigation into “Tell” by listing unclear or loaded word/images in the poem “A Collegelands Catechism” on pages 16-17.

Collegeland is a small village in county Armagh in Northern Ireland. Paul Muldoon is from Armagh.

Catechisms are doctrinal manuals often in the form of questions followed by answers to be memorized, a format that has been used in non-religious or secular contexts as well.

“Orchard County” refers to the Irish county Armagh.

“Garden State” is the official nickname for New Jersey. Paul Muldoon lives in Griggstown, NJ.

Bounty refers to a ship that was purchased by the Royal Navy for a single mission in support of an experiment: she was to travel to Tahiti, pick up breadfruit plants, and transport them to the West Indies in hopes that they would grow well there and become a cheap source of food for slaves. However, there was a mutiny on the ship and it eventually shipwrecked. The commander Muldoon discusses may have been William Blighe.

Jean Francois Gravelet (aka The Great Blondin) was the person “who cooked and ate an omelette / midway across the Niagara Falls”. He was a daredevil who crossed the Falls numerous times in very interesting ways.

Setanta was a mythic character who was born of God and woman (human). He killed a vicious hound to save the fort of Culain and thenafter was known as Cuchulain and had to guard the fort.

Diogenes was a celebrated Greek cynic philosopher who is said to have lived in a tub, wearing the coarsest clothing and living on the plainest food. Many of his sayings have been preserved, and serve for occasional quotation.

Maid of the Mist is a tour boat at Niagara Falls.

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Paul Muldoon’s “A Collegelands Catechism” asks its reader to do some research right away. The title suggests that the poem will use a serious form (doctrinal manual) and will investigate the Irish county in which Muldoon grew up. The idea that Muldoon himself is writing a catechism allows me to read the poem as if he may provide specific memories in place of widely known facts or concepts…he does this, kind of.

The poem opens with the catechism form: “Which is known as the ‘Orchard County’?” (1). Already, I’m expecting Muldoon to compare the Orchard County (or Armagh, which houses Collegeland) to another place. He does this, and asks “Which as the ‘Garden State’?” (2). Muldoon is asking which unknown/existential space is known as either the place where he was born or the place he now lives. Not only is he asking about information that is personal to him, but he is dichotomizing these two very different places and all of the baggage that might come with them (ie, Ireland vs. America).

Muldoon concludes the first stanza with another question about the “captain of the Bounty,” asking the reader again to do research outside of the poem in order to find the answer; I did the research and I believe the answer to his question is William Blighe, the captain of the Bounty. While the first stanza’s first two lines work well together, this third question works almost like a trivia question, again turning the reader from one scene to another and leaving the reader to ponder the power of the places (Ireland, America, the ocean/Tihiti/Fugi).

The second stanza opens with another water scene and another question: “Who cooked and ate an omlette / midway across Niagara Falls?” (5-6). Again, this question requires research to answer the trivia-like question. At this point in the poem, I wonder if Muldoon is combining/linking these questions so that his reader will realize the enormity of the tones one could find in those places (a ship mutiny; a man who not only crosses the Falls but does something as wild as cooking while doing so??). Next, Muldoon transports the reader to a mythical place, asking them to pull the mythology into their real life in order to answer the question “Where did Setanta get / those magical hurley balls / he ram-stammed down the throat / of the blacksmith’s hound?” (7-8). This question definitely requires the reader to complete some research, but the answer is even more interesting than the previous answers. However, I’m not completely sure how Muldoon jumped from the Niagara Falls question to this mythical question…except perhaps that he was moving from something that seemed fictional to something that was truly mythical.

Mythology continues (sort of) as Muldoon asks the reader to identify a Greek philosopher based on his random act of hanging out in a tub, which to be sounds completely random. From here, Muldoon again mixed reality with fiction and mythology…the philosopher “might overhear, / as he went to rub / an apple on his sleeve, the mutineers / plotting to seize the Maid of the Mist” (14-17). Muldoon has laid out his preliminary questions, with separate scenes and themes, and now he is using that information to construct his poem’s mega-question From here, the scene is again Niagara Falls (“crossing the Niagara gorge”), the philosopher’s tub is now “the tub in which he might light a stove / and fold the beaten / eggs into themselves” (20-23).

Whoa! Now I see how my research is paying off…I never could have gotten to the ridiculous place that I am now in the poem if I hadn’t known the details of the images and places that are being melded together. Muldoon continues to ask some questions for which I could find no trivia-like answers: “Who unearthed the egg-trove? / And who, having eaten / the omelette, would marvel at how the Mounties / had so quickly closed in on him, late / of the ‘Orchard County’ by way of the ‘Garden State?” (23-28). Is an egg-trove also mythical? Is there a specific egg-trove? Also, why does it matter who unearthed it? Again, Muldoon compares that question to the following question in the manner in which he asked his first two questions: who has been caught when he tried to escape to the “’Orchard County’ / by way of the ‘Garden State’?

Ahh…so the poem completes its circle now and places the reader back between America and Ireland. However, I don’t think that this poem is meant to close all of its cases upon its completion. I think, instead, that Muldoon was asking us to stretch our brain muscles and try to get as much out of the poem as possible.