000			02199nam a2200241 a 4500
001			066928
005			20231009193420.0
008			120927s2011 nyu 000 p eng
010			_a2010044668
020			_a9780374533168
050	0	0	_aPS3566.I54 _bA6 2011
082	0	0	_a811.54 PIN
100	1		_aPinsky, Robert _d, 1940-
245	1	0	_aSelected poems _c/ Robert Pinsky
246	3		_aRobert Pinsky, selected poems
250			_a1st ed.
260			_aNew York _b: Farrar, Straus and Giroux _c, 2011.
300			_a209 p. _c; 24 cm.
505	0	0	_gFrom _t. Gulf music _g(2007) -- _gfrom _t. Jersey rain _g(2000) -- _gfrom new poems in _t. The figured wheel _g(1996) -- _gfrom _t. The want bone _g(1990) -- _gfrom _t. History of my heart _g(1984) -- _gfrom _t. An explanation of America _g(1979) -- _gfrom _t. Sadness and happiness _g(1975).
520			_aSince Sadness and Happiness (1975) Pinsky has rightly accumulated praise for his ambitious attempts to speak for America, traditional craft (iambic pentameters, couplet rhymes), and careful use of his own life. Pinsky's mentally ill mother, his extended family, and their urban Jewish roots inform many poems, though he ends up not so much confessional as representative, devoted to an American melting pot. This first selected in 14 years from the former U.S. poet laureate contains no new poems; it begins with recent work: a poem in the form of a prayer invokes a "Holy One who loves blood sacrifice/ And burnt offerings, commerce and the Arts"; "Rhyme" depicts "all the unsteady/ Chambered voices that share it,/ Each reciting I too was here." That sense of an American gathering extends throughout the volume, into the angry political poems of Gulf Music (2007), a reference to Hurricane Katrina, through the prose blocks of "An Alphabet of My Dead," and back to what may still be Pinsky's most famous poem, the book-length An Explanation of America (1979), excerpted here, whose clearly argued triads of blank verse compared the United States after Vietnam to the republic in earlier days-and to imperial Rome. However well Pinsky fits a wide modern audience, he is also someone whose poems should last.
650		0	_aPoetry, American
942			_cMO
999			_c270090 _d270090