Book (signed by the author):

In his new book of rock lyrics, Paul Muldoon goes back to the essential meaning of the term “lyric”—a short poem sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument. These words are written for music most assuredly, with half an ear to Yeats’s ballad-singing porter drinkers and half to Cole Porter—and indeed, many of them double as rock songs, performed by Wayside Shrines, the Princeton-based music collective of which Muldoon is a member. Their themes are the classic themes of song: lost love, lost wars, Charlton Heston, barbed wire, pole dancers, cellulite, Hegel, elephants, Oedipus, more barbed wire, Buddy Holly, Jersey peaches, Julius Caesar, Trenton, cockatoos, and the Youngers (Bob and John and Jim and Cole). The Word on the Street is a lively addition to this Pulitzer Prize–winning poet’s masterful body of work. It demonstrates, once again, that, as Richard Eder has written in the pages of The New York Times Book Review, “Paul Muldoon is a shape-shifting Proteus to readers who try to pin him down . . . Those who interrogate Muldoon’s poems find themselves changing shapes each time he does.”

CD: 

The Wayside Shrines are a collective of Princeton-based musicians playing original songs with lyrics by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon. Other band members are Tim Chaston (vocals, violin), Ila Couch (vocals, guitar), Chris Harford (guitar, vocals, Band of Changes, formerly of Three Colors), Ray Kubian (drums, vocals, formerly of True Love, Mars Needs Women), Noriko Manabe (keyboards, vocals, clarinet), Kate Neal (accordion, string arrangements), and Nigel Smith (bass, vocals). Produced by Paul Q. Kolderie; saxes by Dana Colley (Morphine), additional vocals by Mark Mulcahy. The Word on the Street is the group's debut album, providing an eclectic mix of rock, indie folk, pop, reggae, country, and classical influences. The songs set some of Muldoon's lyrics from his book of the same name, Word on the Street. Follow the band at facebook.com/waysideshrines.

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