It’s a sunny morning on Witherspoon Street. A couple holding hands strolls down the sidewalk, the woman wearing a sunhat and the man donning a baseball cap. A truck blares as it reverses into a minute parking spot, while a dog barks in the distance. The tables outside of Mamoun’s Falafel are largely unoccupied.
Yet, in one of the cold metal chairs sits Paul Muldoon, clad in all-black, up to his sunglasses. Muldoon holds several positions at Princeton, including the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professorship in the Humanities and a Professorship of Creative Writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts. Muldoon has authored fifteen full-length poetry collections and served as The New Yorker’s poetry editor. He is highly decorated, having won a Pulitzer Prize and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. The Daily Princetonian sat down to talk about his spoken word music group, Rogue Oliphant.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.
The Daily Princetonian: Can you tell us a little bit about Rogue Oliphant? What kind of style or genre do you consider yourselves to be?
Paul Muldoon: I’m not sure if we fall into any genre. This is a culture now where everything is pigeonholed. I think new genres are quite important in music, as it is in a bookstore. If you go into a bookstore, you’re looking for young adult. It’s conceivable that our genre is old adult, but I’m just making that up.
We’ve also been playing with the idea of calling it “art-alt” or “alt-art.” It’s basically rock and roll, insofar as rock and roll is a viable entity. Some people say it’s not. Some people say it’s dead. One may more or less point to when it started with Little Richard and Chuck Berry. It was taken up by the Stones and the Beatles and various other bands. It’s quite diverse.
There are several composers within the band, and each of them has their own style. We try not to do the same thing twice. Depending on who’s writing the music for the song, some of it’s bar poppy, some of it is almost Americana, and in some of it, there’s a bit of spoken word with musical accompaniment.
I’d say the genre is not boring. That’s the hope. One wants to be doing something slightly different, even though most things fall into a pattern. We like to have fun.
DP: You’ve performed in some interesting venues. You’ll be at Joe’s Pub in November.
PM: November 26. We’ve played Joe’s a few times. Joe’s was a great venue. It’s named after Joseph Papp, who founded the Public Theater. He’s a guy I actually met many years ago. We love playing there. It’s the kind of venue with a varied diet of music and entertainment of various kinds.
DP: If you could bring the band to Princeton, what’s a dream campus venue?
PM: We have played, and apparently it sounded not too bad, in the forum of the Lewis Center. It’s a lot of hard surfaces there, and it’s somewhat cavernous, boomy, echoey, which often leads to acoustic problems. It sounded pretty good.
I’m a big fan of Richardson Auditorium, but it’s a venue that’s best suited to acoustic performances rather than amplified. Our instruments are electrified. Once you start upping the decibel level, projecting sound through speakers and amps, you set up a whole new set of problems. We played in Richardson along the way.
The theater in Frist [Campus] Center is quite nice. We played in the Berlind Theater over the years.
I actually would love to see the stadium used more for rock concerts. I’ve said that for years, but I’m not sure if anyone’s paying any attention. It’d be great to have a few rock concerts in the stadium.
DP: If you could have any guest performer, who would it be?
PM: I do a show called Muldoon’s Picnic at the Irish Art Center, where we have many guests. We did one a couple of weeks ago where our guest was Paul Simon. We have loads of guests, some of whom play with us. Steve Earl was there. Many people over the years played with us.
One of my heroes, and someone from whom I’ve learned quite a lot, is no longer with us. A guy called Warren Zevon. He’s been dead for about 10 years, unfortunately. Nice to get him back in some way. I’m not sure if he’s going to make it.
Music does invite people in. It’s a truism; it’s a cliché. It is a universal language, and it’s lovely to see people popping along. So, we’d have any guests that would have us. There are always interesting student bands.
One of the things I taught over the years…you may or may not be aware of “How to Write a Song.” Did you ever take it?
DP: I didn’t. I remember the year that Paul McCartney dropped in.
PM: That’s correct. There were many downsides to the COVID era. Almost everything was a downside. But one of the upsides for us was Paul McCartney. To get him to come to campus would be a big deal. The fact that he was able to show up virtually was fabulous, and he was absolutely brilliant. He often says about himself that, had he not been a Beatle, he would have been an English teacher.
Let’s say we had 10 student songs. The class would break into groups of maybe four. They would write a song and then perform it, which was then critiqued in the class. He himself critiqued songs, which is pretty amazing.
DP: Was it scary for the students?
PM: Maybe. I don’t know. What an opportunity. When we’re working with students, it’s as likely that a student will write a really good song or a really good poem as anybody. In fact, it’s maybe even more likely. We try to treat everybody seriously.
In my own case, I published my first book when I was a student; when I was 21. Sometimes some of the very best poems are written by much younger people again.
DP: You’re known here for poetry. Could you speak a little bit on the relationship between poetry and music?
PM: I’m not really a musician myself. I’m a person who has been in bands where it was okay to play three chords. I’m not sure if I ever knew which one I was supposed to be playing. This particular band, when the musicians are really quite very good, they don’t allow me to play with them. I write the words.
I’ve always been fascinated by trying to write songs. It’s terribly difficult. I think it’s actually harder to write a good song than it might be to write a poem. The distinction I make between the two of them is that there always has to be something missing in a song lyric, which the music will fill out. As one’s writing, one has to be conscious of an absence, which is a weird way to think. In poetry, what we’re always trying to do is have everything in the case of the poem. The poem brings its own score. It tells you what it wants to be. It’s hard to talk about in the abstract. The poem is a complete package. The song lyric is incomplete.
DP: Anything else you’d like to add?
PM: Try not to have me say anything daft. That’s my big request.
Isabella Dail is a staff News writer and head editor for The Prospect for the ‘Prince.’
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