Madoc: A Mystery by Paul Muldoon

Subtitled A Mystery, this verse narrative collects several poems concerning the so-called "Pantisocracy" (meaning a state ruled equally by all), a utopian scheme devised and later abandoned by the 18th-century poet-philosophers Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. What if they had indeed set up such an ideal community on the banks of the Susquehanna? That is the crux of this book's long and fascinating title poem, which depicts events via the mind's eye of one of Southey's reputed descendants.The poems in this book also focus more directly on the legend of Madoc himself, the Welsh prince who some believe came to America 300 years before Columbus and sired a line of Welsh-speaking Indians.