Although Paul Muldoon's poetry is renowned for its erudition, allusiveness and formal precision, it is also notorious for being enigmatic and unforthcoming. A ‘Muldoonian’ poem is described thus: ‘confessional but reticent, lucid but ambiguous, idiomatic but classically formed, artless but supremely erudite, confident but self-effacing, approachable but unknowable’. Two main strands of thought fuel the accusation that he is ‘simply’ a playful technician. First, some critics focus unduly on the Barthesian nature of his work whereby the author's ashes rest peacefully in a well-wrought urn and authority (in every sense) passes on to the reader: ‘Far from placing writerly control as the central organizing principle of the poetry, [Muldoon] undermines expectations of a stable point of origin in language or intention.’ This contention goes against his own stated conviction that ‘it's the poet's job to take into account, as best he or she is able, all possible readings of the poem’, and, I will argue, it also misrepresents the function of his literary allusions. Secondly, and more damningly, his poetry is said to suffer from a surfeit of intellect. ‘The questions that gather above the young genius's head’, writes Fennella Copplestone, ‘are ones about content, meaning, and commitment. Self-caricature might be another, along with playing to the gallery that has come to see and love the Oirish in the clever wee man, who does his bit for Ireland by including so much of the macgibberish in his lines.’ His work has at times, therefore, been dismissed as ‘postmodern quixotica’, while he himself has been described derogatively as ‘a sophisticated high-gloss technician’.

There is little doubt about Muldoon's wide-ranging intelligence, nor can one question his commitment to the exigencies of poetic form. However, when the two go hand-in-hand, critics have been tempted to agree with the self-condemnatory lines from The Annals of Chile: ‘Thing is, a Phóil, your head's so far up your own fat butt / you've pretty much disappeared’ (AC163).