Why Brownlee Left

Why Brownlee Left, a Poetry Book Society Choice and winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, confirmed Paul Muldoon’s reputation as the most inventive voice of his generation when it was first published in 1980. The key figure in the poet’s third collection is the enigmatic Brownlee; strong-willed and wayward, past shaky, future hazy, present whereabouts uncertain. There are many new departures here, but Why Brownlee Left also explores with increasing authority themes already apparent in New Weather (1973) and Mules (1977). It culminates in a retelling of ‘Immram Mael Duin’, a strange voyage of self-discovery by the poet’s legendary ancestor.