I'm interested in revelation and what will be revealed through the poem, through me,

not what I have to reveal, but what it has to reveal.

Today, a conversation with verse, with the Irish poet and New Yorker poetry editor,

Paul Muldoon.

He's won the Pulitzer Prize, written for other media from radio to song, and plays in a rock band,

Rogue Allafant.

He visited us for a magical day at the on-beings studios on Loring Park in Minneapolis,

including a dinner salon and reading from his work, like this excerpt from his poem called

Pelt.

They piled it on all day till I gave way to a contentment I'd not felt in years.

Not since that winter, I'd worn the world against my skin, worn it fur side in.

I'm Christopher Tippet, and this is on-beings.

Paul Muldoon holds the Howard G.B. Clark Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University.

He's been with the New Yorker since 2007, and he is the author of 12 major collections

at poetry, including horse latitudes, hay, and his latest collection, 1,000 Things Worth

Knowing.

So you were born in County, Irma, in Northern Ireland, in a Catholic family in the Moe.

The Moe was the name of the village.

The Moe is the name of the village.

The village nearby, it's actually on the border of counties, Irma and Tarones.

So it's about half way across Northern Ireland.

We were actually in County, Irma, but the Moe itself is in County, Tarones, substantially.

...