Of Plan B an interim volume that included several of the poems in Maggot Robert McCrum recently said in the London Observer that Paul Muldoon who has done so much to reimagine the poets task has surpassed himself with his latest collection In his eleventh fulllength book Muldoon reminds us that he is a traditional poet who is steadfastly at odds with tradition If the poetic sequence is the main mode of Maggot it certainly isnt your fathers poetic sequence Taking as a starting point W B Yeatss remark that the only fit topics for a serious mood are sex and the dead Muldoon finds unexpected ways of thinking and feeling about what it means to come to terms with the early twentyfirst century Its no accident that the centerpiece of Maggot is an outlandish meditation on a failed poem that draws on the vocabulary of entomological forensics The last series of linked lyrics meanwhile takes as its subject the urge to memorialize the scenes of fatal automobile accidents The extravagant linkage of rot and the erotic is at the heart of not only the title sequence but also many of the round songs that characterize Maggot and has led Angela Leighton writing in The Times Literary Supplement to see these new poems as giving readers a thrilling wild fairground ride with few letups for the squeamish