{"id":22676,"date":"2018-10-09T15:36:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T20:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.berkshirelinks.com\/?p=22676"},"modified":"2018-10-09T15:36:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T20:36:00","slug":"paul-muldoon-with-rogue-oliphant-at-hancock-shaker-village","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/paul-muldoon-with-rogue-oliphant-at-hancock-shaker-village\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Muldoon with Rogue Oliphant at Hancock Shaker Village"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Article updated Oct. 10, 2018, by <a href=\"https:\/\/daveread.me\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Dave Conlin Read<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Ed. note: Click the linked text for information about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.klinkhart.org\/poetry\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Muldoon&#8217;s Sharon Springs Poetry Festival, Oct. 18-19<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Listening to a poet say his poems is an opportunity to glimpse words at work. Words were at play when <strong>Paul Muldoon<\/strong> with <strong>Rogue Oliphant<\/strong> held forth in the rectangular wooden barn upslope from the round stone one at <strong>Hancock Shaker Village<\/strong>, October 6, 2018.<\/p>\n<p>Said to be \u201cThe most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War,*\u201d Paul Muldoon dazzled the audience with a dizzying array of word play, while his &#8220;loose affiliation of composers and musicians&#8221; transformed the barn into a <strong>CBGB<\/strong> satellite.  (*<strong>The Times Literary Supplement<\/strong>)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zTWqKW4RdzQ?start=338\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The amiable Muldoon speaks softly and slowly; his voice a good vehicle both for holding the audience&#8217;s attention and for carrying them to Ireland, home already to four <strong>Nobel Literature<\/strong> laureates, including <strong>Seamus Heaney<\/strong>, Muldoon&#8217;s college tutor.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chris Harford<\/strong>, on guitar and vocals, was an apt foil for Muldoon; one resembled a staid professor while the other stayed true to rock star form. Muldoon would wander away from the mic for long stretches, sometimes after saying the lyric <em>a cappella<\/em>, then leaving the band to animate it \u2013 with ballsy bass lines, insistent drum taps, sick guitar solos and wailing fiddle licks. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/berkshires-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/IMG_58821.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/berkshires-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/IMG_58821-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Paul Muldoon and Rogue Oliphant at Hancock Shaker Village\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-22690\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3>song v. poem Dylan or Roth?<\/h3>\n<p>On fiddle and guitar was <strong>David Mansfield<\/strong>, whom we first saw in concert when <a href=\"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/bob-dylans-rolling-thunder-revue-party-mama-frascas-dream-lodge\/\">Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue<\/a> played two shows in Springfield. Speaking of Dylan, here&#8217;s what the late poet <strong>Donald Hall<\/strong> told me about him getting the Nobel: &#8220;Curiously, when I read Bob Dylan on the page, the words make no sound! Poetry-sound is utterly different from music. When he sings them, I reckon that they make a good noise!&#8230;<strong>Phil Roth<\/strong> should have won the Nobel, and now he never will.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t mean to disparage Dylan, whose bandwagon I&#8217;ve been riding practically since it left the station &#8211; but, just like him, I know there&#8217;s a  difference between a poem and a song. This project of Muldoon&#8217;s is worthy of widespread attention, because it is so much fun, with such great music, audiences may wind up falling in love with language itself. Then they&#8217;d become better listeners, they&#8217;d pay closer attention &#8230; <\/p>\n<p>Funny thing about this concert is that it concluded with a song, <em>Comeback<\/em>, that describes the way the season at <strong>Tanglewood<\/strong> now opens: heavily-hyped shows by remnants of rock royalty &#8211; a sad spectacle often, but excusable when the royalties, too, have dried up. <\/p>\n<p>Introducing it, Muldoon referred to <strong>The Who<\/strong> &#8211; competing remnants of which have played there the last two seasons, taking up the space and time that should be reserved for musicians with something new to say &#8211; as they themselves did when they dropped by five days before <strong>Woodstock!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The <strong>Irish Arts Center<\/strong> in NYC is the locale of <strong>Muldoon&#8217;s Picnic<\/strong>, which convenes on the second Monday of the month, featuring Rogue Oliphant and &#8211; as Chris Harford puts it, &#8220;Paul&#8217;s literary friends, like <strong>Salmon Rushdie<\/strong> and <strong>Joyce Carol Oates<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Links: \t\t<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/hancockshakervillage.org\/\">Hancock Shaker Village<\/a>;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.paulmuldoonpoetry.com\/\">Paul Muldoon<\/a>;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rogueoliphant.net\/\">Rogue Oliphant<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Article updated Oct. 10, 2018, by Dave Conlin Read Ed. note: Click the linked text for information about Paul Muldoon&#8217;s Sharon Springs Poetry Festival, Oct. 18-19. Listening to a poet say his poems is an opportunity to glimpse words at work. Words were at play when Paul Muldoon with Rogue Oliphant held forth in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22692,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}