For a student majoring in English, it is difficult to admit when a book challenges my vocabulary, forcing me to have a dictionary on hand. Moy Sand and Gravel, however, is one such book, humiliating in its own intriguing, wordsmith way.

Paul Muldoon's dense verse gave me the sinking feeling I had only been exposed to Dr. Seuss rhymes. Muldoon's poetry was like concentrated excellence extract -- a 38-word poem kept me musing and mulling for hours. Far from passive entertainment, Muldoon's ninth book of poetry demands reader participation and thought.

But it is well worth it. Muldoon's strength is seated in his incredible descriptions. In "An Old Pit Pony," he writes "its coat is a cloud hung on a line." Another poem, "Redknots," has a flock of birds "getting up all at once as if for a rock concert encore." With explanations like these, seeing isn't believing -- it's superfluous. Besides his clever comparisons, Muldoon has a penchant for thought-provoking subject matter. Muldoon takes on the peerless experience of parenthood in "Cradle Song for Asher." Like a whispered naptime lullaby, he jots "When they cut your birth cord yesterday it was I who drifted away."

In a cutting, Ginsu knife attack on greed entitled "The Goose," Muldoon remakes the story of the goose with the golden egg. His unique version has the owners performing surgery on the goose in an attempt to get at the gold as he writes "they went after one another's ovaries and womb."

Though Muldoon's literature should bear a rating for mature minds, its sophistication is certainly stunning. Borrowing a word from Muldoon's voluminous vocabulary, Moy Sand and Gravel was real "pukka" (superior, first-class).

-- Reviewed by Matthew Webster