Poem Analysis: Quoof By Paul Muldoon

The poem “Quoof” written by Paul Muldoon is one that goes back in time to a simpler period of the speaker’s life and compares that scene to the speaker’s current state of living. The poem begins with the speaker carrying a hot water bottle to bed. The speaker refers to the hot water bottle as a “quoof” and states how that is the family word for the hot water bottle, otherwise the reader would really not have an idea as to what a quoof is. Muldoon’s poem compares this hot water bottle, known as a quoof, to the speaker’s father’s heated up half-brick in a sock. The poem does not have any specific rhyme scheme or meter, although it does flow as if it did. I argue the speaker of the poem is reminded of an earlier time in their life living with their father and yearns for that sense of belonging and now does not

We learn that the word quoof is a family word, essentially it is a made up word for which they call the hot water bottle. The speaker says, “How often have I carried our family word/ for the hot water bottle/ to a strange bed” (1-3). When the speaker says “the family word for the hot water bottle” the audience infers that the family word is the title of the poem, quoof, as quoof is not an actual word. The speaker is reflecting on their life in this line, and uses the combination of “How often” and “strange bed”. From this, the audience can presume that the speaker often travels around and really does not have a steady home. When the speaker says “strange bed” that indicates that the speaker has no definite bed to call their own. The speaker then compares their current life to the life of their father when they say, “as my father would juggle a red-hot half brick/ in an old sock/ to his childhood settle” (4-6). The speaker is making a direct comparison between his quoof, or hot water bottle and his father’s red-hot half brick in an old