Nearly every poem in Maggot, Paul Muldoon's brilliant new collection, rewards close reading and research. From the opening poem, “Plan B,” which makes us imagine “plan A”; to the images piled like presents under the tree in “A Christmas in the Fifties”; to exploring the relationship between effectiveness and truthfulness in images in “Moryson's Fancy”; right on through to the wayward shrines in “Wayward Shrines”; the poems invite and reward your concentration. This doesn't mean they are dense labors of profundity (though I would suggest reading with a dictionary), but they are works of rich images, and artifices of evocative language that imply much more than they state. A great poem is really an infinite number of poems; its significance transforms upon each reading. Only having read the poems a few times each, I can't say whether any of them are great, but I can say nearly all have the potential to be great. And I can say this is one of the best collections I've reviewed.- Reviewed in Bookslut