Joy in Service on Rue Tagore

In this expansive outing, Muldoon (Howdie Skelp) displays a certain ruefulness, despite being in full command of “that much-vaunted consistency of tone” (as one of the poems puts it) readers have come to associate with him. Muldoon draws connections between unlikely sources, which lends his work a rambunctious, metaphysical undertone. But there’s an overtly political edge to many of the entries here, blending periods and layering symbols to tackle contemporary and historical disaster and subtly explore “the appetite for killing without qualm.” “So much else has vanished/ from our lives,” Muldoon writes, hitting a lightly apocalyptic note. Odessa becomes twinned with Ross’s Mill in Muldoon’s native Ulster, and there are warnings for despots, from “a body hanging upside down by a hook/ like a goat hanging in a souk” to a prediction for Putin: “His poker-face and his death-mask/ will be one and the same.” Muldoon continues his propensity for the longer poem in sequence and the chiming, lexical harmonies with which he makes symphonies. Lyrical, forthright, and playfully sophisticated, these are poems with a bounce to their step and a finger on history’s pulse. (Sept.)