Book excerpt: Originally commissioned by Madison Opera as a libretto for American composer Daron Aric Hagen, Shining Brow can be read as a dramatic poem in its own right. Displaying all the structural ingenuity and subtle resonance that have marked Paul Muldoon as the most influential poet of his generation, it tells, with suitable bravura, the story of architectural genius Frank Lloyd Wright and his catastrophic affair with the wife of a wealthy client.