Paul Muldoon: Where Poetry meets Rock ‘n’ Roll

Muldoon’s Picnic — the long-running reading and performance series hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, now at 92NY — is named for neither its founder nor a picnic. A tongue-in-cheek tribute to a popular vaudeville act of the same name from the turn of the 20th century, Muldoon’s Picnic is conceived in the spirit of the same madcap music hall tradition that inspired Saturday Night Live — part words, part music, 100% entertainment, all with a killer house band fronted by Muldoon himself.

Ahead of the two upcoming two Muldoon’s Picnics on April 29 and May 19 — featuring National Book Award-winning poet Patricia Smith, legendary singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, bestselling biographer Susan Morrison, novelist Mona Simpson, and many more — Muldoon sat down with us to discuss the origins of the series, the gut-level connection between poetry and music, his early songwriting efforts with Warren Zevon, and much more.

Muldoon’s Picnic takes its name from a vaudeville act of the same name, and your version — Paul Muldoon’s Muldoon’s Picnic — carries on in a vaudevillian spirit. Tell us about the origins of your version of the series.

It sounds terribly self-absorbed to call it Muldoon’s Picnic after oneself, but the original was extremely popular as an entertainment at the end of the 19th century! It was so popular that at one point there were two competing Muldoon’s Picnics — there was a report in The New York Times from back then that said that not seeing Muldoon’s Picnic was like not seeing Central Park. It started as a recurring sketch about life in a tenement. In this particular sketch there was a character named Muldoon, and it has since become a popular name in the comedy tradition, a name associated with stage Irishness. Saturday Night Live derives from exactly the same source — the music hall tradition. I wanted to do something in that vaudevillian spirit, but with literature and music. The series has appeared in various venues, and we are thrilled to be associated with 92NY.

What does it mean to you to host the series at 92NY?

92NY is an amazing venue — people want to perform there, which makes it an easy ask for me as a curator. In the next few months we’ll have musicians like Loudon Wainwright and Sam and Louise Sullivan — gifted, thrilling songwriters. Often we have a prose writer or two, like Susan Morrison, who recently published a fascinating book about Lorne Michaels and SNL. And then coming up we’ll have Patricia Smith, who just won the National Book Award for poetry, and Timothy Donnelly, who is really one of the most interesting poets writing today. 92NY is a venue that has historically been incredibly important for both music and poetry, and storytelling of all kinds.

Poetry sometimes has a reputation for being cut off from the flow of everyday life, except in certain occasions like weddings and funerals. What is the role of poetry in this series, outside of an academic setting?

Far too often, the general discussion of poetry assumes that it’s dead. But poetry continues to be a vital force in our culture. I have a broad view of poetry, which includes the popular song tradition — if we include that, poetry has massive influence on the culture. Academics have insisted that poems are unintelligible without the help of a teacher — unless you have a smart person in the room decoding the poem for you, you don’t have a chance of understanding it, mere worm that you are. [Laughs] It’s a vicious cycle. So people believe that poetry is not for them, other than maybe at a wedding or funeral, when poor Dylan Thomas is inevitably trotted out to commemorate someone passing into the great beyond. But if most people sat down to read a poem, it is often quite available to them. And of course people know how to listen to Loudon Wainwright, because they have been listening to songs their whole lives. People know intimately how to watch films, because they have been doing it their whole lives. Would that it were the case with poetry. For myself, the mission for this series is to make poetry seem as ordinary and pleasurable as listening to a song or going to the movies.

You play in the series’ house band, Rogue Oliphant. What is the relationship, for you, between poetry and music?

I’ve always been involved in various bands, and I write the lyrics for Rogue Oliphant, which is made up of some really incredible musicians. The first song I wrote was with Warren Zevon, who is now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I learned an awful lot from him. It was just after September 11 — 25 years ago. One of the things he taught me to appreciate is the power of the cliché, or the tweak of the familiar phrase. Songs are short. You have to grab people immediately, and one way to do that is by allowing people to see something that they think they already know, but in a new way. This is true of much poetry also. Everything I do feeds into my poetry. All poems, to borrow an idea from Robert Frost, are in conversation with one another. I think that’s true of the relationship between poetry and music as well.

Over the years, performers in the series have included Salman Rushdie, Eileen Myles, Jhumpa Lahiri, Mike Birbiglia, Zadie Smith and Steve Earle. Paul Simon showed up as a surprise guest. How do you decide who to invite?

I try to get people who are really good at what they do, the best artists I can find. I try to get a range of people every time — gender, ethnicity, age, and of course art, to reflect the diversity of our culture and society. I try to get a good singer-songwriter, a good prose writer, and a good poet. That’s the only secret to it. There is nothing that beats hearing literature and music in the same room with other people. That’s who we are. It’s a deeply human instinct — just as when we gathered in the back of a cave somewhere to tell stories and entertain one another.

What do you hope audience members will take with them from these evenings?

I don’t want to sound like I’m running for office, but I do think that this kind of live entertainment helps us to get through the difficulties that assail us. I do think we need a sense of community at the moment. We are so isolated. Everything conspires to isolate us. We are stuck in our own news cycles. To go out of an evening and allow oneself to be taken over by art is a gift. People will feel good coming away from this show.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon hosts Muldoon’s Picnic on April 29 and May 19. Get your tickets now.