"Lennon and McCartney's friendship was becoming increasingly strained!" - PAUL MULDOON, Let It Be, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics #ALifeinLyrics #JohnLennon #HappyBirthdayJohnLennon #PaulMuldoon

"In 1968, when The Beatles recorded and released Helter Skelter, there was a new kind of rock and roll in the air!" - PAUL MULDOON, Helter Skelter, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics #ALifeinLyrics #GlobalBeatlesDay #PaulMuldoon

"The Beatles were the most famous musicians in the world!" - PAUL MULDOON, The End, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics #ALifeinLyrics #GlobalBeatlesDay #PaulMuldoon

"What does that mean?" - PAUL MULDOON, Band on the Run, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics #ALifeinLyrics #PaulMuldoon

Litotes – Paul Muldoon

Though it wasn’t until 411 BC he took up the oar
in the Peloponnesian War
against “man-loosening” Lysander,

our hero was not unknown
to Thucydides, who’d evenhandedly intone
“What’s sauce for Aegeus is sauce for the gander.”

Despite his background
being less than sound,
he nonetheless managed to drive a phaeton

through the Spartan ranks
or, on more than one occasion, an oar-bank.
If his circumstances were quite often straitened

he couldn’t say no
to manning up and having a go
at the slightest hint of an old school oligarchy.

No scanty there, then?
Faced with the very same problem time and again
he would resort to being snide or snarky

and immediately made a dent
in it. It was no small accomplishment
that he somehow managed to claim kin with Nestor

and, since he was far
from the sharpest ray in the earthstar,
was quite likely an ancestor

of the not exactly inspiring Greek
who would eke
out an existence in the precincts of the Abbey

where he’d been married sword in hand, ye Gads,
turning out to be not half bad
or, as Thucydides would have it, “None too shabby.”

by Paul Muldoon (b. 1951).

I recently discovered the poetry of Paul Muldoon who, as once described in the New York Times, “… takes some honest-to-God reading. He’s a riddler, enigmatic, distrustful of appearances, generous in allusion, doubtless a dab hand at crossword puzzles.” This poem is from Joy in Service on Rue Tagore (2024), which is published by Faber & Faber.

#Litotes #PaulMuldoon #Poem #Poetry

"Most of the nonsense lyrics weren't meant to be interpreted, they were meant to be felt!" - PAUL MULDOON, Helter Skelter, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics #ALifeinLyrics #PaulMuldoon

"Paul McCartney has been a nature lover and bird watcher since childhood!" - PAUL MULDOON, Jenny Wren / Blackbird, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics #ALifeinLyrics #NationalBirdDay #PaulMuldoon

"McCartney still played guitar, he just avoided the solos!" - PAUL MULDOON, Michelle, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics #ALifeinLyrics #PaulMuldoon

"John Lennon died on December 8th, 1980!" - PAUL MULDOON, Here Today, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics #ALifeinLyrics #PaulMuldoon