Scanty Plot of Ground: A Book of Sonnets

by Paul Muldoon

In the introduction to his selection of some of the greatest sonnets ever written, Paul Muldoon reminds us that 'of the innumerable traditional verse forms, the sonnet is not only the most persistent but also the most pervasive.' He suggests that 'part of the reason for the durability of the sonnet is its very duration.' It's the perfect length for what Dante Gabriel Rossetti described as 'a moment's monument,' or Edna St. Vincent Millay as putting 'chaos into fourteen lines.' Among the diverting and diverse poets represented here are Elizabeth Bishop, Wanda Coleman, John Donne, Terrance Hayes, John Keats, Claude McKay, Christina Rossetti, William Shakespeare, Patricia Smith, William Wordsworth, and W.B. Yeats. There are also translations by Paul Muldoon of sonnets by Charles Baudelaire, Rainer Maria Rilke, Cesar Vallejo, as well as the doughty duo of Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud.

Genres: Poetry

150 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication November 18, 2025

About the author

Born in Northern Ireland, Muldoon currently resides in the US and teaches at Princeton University. He held the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University from 1999 through 2004. In September 2007, Muldoon became the poetry editor of The New Yorker.

Awards:
1992: Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Madoc: A Mystery
1994: T. S. Eliot Prize for The Annals of Chile
1997: Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry for New Selected Poems 1968–1994
2002: T. S. Eliot Prize (shortlist) for Moy Sand and Gravel
2003: Griffin Poetry Prize (Canada) for Moy Sand and Gravel
2003: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Moy Sand and Gravel
2004: American Ireland Fund Literary Award
2004: Aspen Prize
2004: Shakespeare Prize