Muldoon's Homesickness

As I read Moy Sand and Gravel, the first Muldoon book I've read, one of the things I found myself most curious about was the idea of the person fitting into a whole. This is seen throughout the book, as the speaker regularly draws on wife & child to invoke a poem. Further though, Muldoon himself raises an interesting scenario in which he is both an Irish poet and an American poet. The landscapes of the book run from Muldoon's youth in Moy to the speaker's driveway in New Jersey. How does Muldoon find a balance between these two different experiences? The effort to maintain the two worlds is apparent in his poem Homesickness (p. 71), where he uses extended metaphors (see p. 70, p. 53 for further examples from this book) as an important device in the poem. Perhaps more noteworthy, and that which first drew my attention, is the use of 2-line, italicised, refrain-like stanzas following each body stanza. The precise nature of these refrains lead me to suspect they were part of some established tradition - an Irish folk song, most likely. In researching these lines, I found that they seem nothing more than the invention of Muldoon. They, do however, have a very important significance to bridge Muldoon in America to the Irish Muldoon. The refrain is a nod to the lord of Irish poets, W B Yeats - and one that Muldoon uses often in his poetry. A very interesting essay on this device's use by Muldoon, which includes selections of exclusive Muldoon interview, can be found here:

http://heldref-publications.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,13,14;journal,11,21;linkingpublicationresults,1:119956,1

It seems the most important thing for students to notice in reading Muldoon is his intense attention to craft. Homesickness features a end-rhyme scheme of "abcdacbd," meticulously structured. Muldoon has surpassed mere linguistic talent though, as his poetry, for all its structure and form, is able to find meaning that is often lost in the use of form by lesser-skilled writers.