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  • Selected Poems by Robert Pinsky (Excerpts)

    Written by

    Robert Pinsky
    867 views6 pages
    “Simply said, Robert Pinsky is one of the few literary artists working in our language whose work is unquestionably major work.” —Louise Glück Intense verbal music with a jazz feeling; invention against the grain of expectation; intelligence racing among materials with the variety of a busy street—these have been the qualities of Robert Pinsky’s work since his first book, Sadness and Happiness (1975), celebrated for setting a new direction in American poetry. At that time, responding to a question about that book, Pinsky said: “I would like to write a poetry which could contain every kind of thing, while keeping all the excitement of poetry.” That ambition was realized in a new way with each of his books, including the book-length personal monologue An Explanation of America; the transformed autobiography of History of My Heart; the bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante; and, most recently, the savage, inventive Gulf Music. That variety and renewal are represented in this brilliantly chosen volume. http://www.fsgpoetry.com/ Excerpted from SELECTED POEMS by Robert Pinsky, published in April 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2011 by Robert Pinsky. All rights reserved.

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    “Simply said, Robert Pinsky is one of the few literary artists working in our language whose work is unquestionably major work.” —Louise Glück Intense verbal music with a jazz feeling; invention against the grain of expectation; intelligence racing among materials with the variety of a busy street—these have been the qualities of Robert Pinsky’s work since his first book, Sadness and Happiness (1975), celebrated for setting a new direction in American poetry. At that time, responding to a question about that book, Pinsky said: “I would like to write a poetry which could contain every kind of thing, while keeping all the excitement of poetry.” That ambition was realized in a new way with each of his books, including the book-length personal monologue An Explanation of America; the transformed autobiography of History of My Heart; the bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante; and, most recently, the savage, inventive Gulf Music. That variety and renewal are represented in this brilliantly chosen volume. http://www.fsgpoetry.com/ Excerpted from SELECTED POEMS by Robert Pinsky, published in April 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2011 by Robert Pinsky. All rights reserved.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    867 views6 pages

    Selected Poems by Robert Pinsky (Excerpts)

    Written by

    Robert Pinsky
    “Simply said, Robert Pinsky is one of the few literary artists working in our language whose work is unquestionably major work.” —Louise Glück Intense verbal music with a jazz feeling; invention against the grain of expectation; intelligence racing among materials with the variety of a busy street—these have been the qualities of Robert Pinsky’s work since his first book, Sadness and Happiness (1975), celebrated for setting a new direction in American poetry. At that time, responding to a question about that book, Pinsky said: “I would like to write a poetry which could contain every kind of thing, while keeping all the excitement of poetry.” That ambition was realized in a new way with each of his books, including the book-length personal monologue An Explanation of America; the transformed autobiography of History of My Heart; the bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante; and, most recently, the savage, inventive Gulf Music. That variety and renewal are represented in this brilliantly chosen volume. http://www.fsgpoetry.com/ Excerpted from SELECTED POEMS by Robert Pinsky, published in April 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2011 by Robert Pinsky. All rights reserved.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 6

    pinsky.tx.

    25M 1/17/11 10:56 PM Page 3 MASTER

    RHYME

    Air an instrument of the tongue,


    The tongue an instrument
    Of the body, the body
    An instrument of spirit,
    The spirit a being of the air.

    A bird the medium of its song.


    A song a world, a containment
    Like a hotel room, ready
    For us guests who inherit
    Our compartment of time there.

    In the Cornell box, among


    Ephemera as its element,
    The preserved bird—a study
    In spontaneous elegy, the parrot
    Art, mortal in its cornered sphere.

    The room a stanza rung


    In a laddered filament
    Clambered by all the unsteady
    Chambered voices that share it,
    Each reciting I too was here—

    3
    pinsky.tx.25M 1/17/11 10:56 PM Page 4 MASTER

    In a room, a rhyme, a song.


    In the box, in books: each element
    An instrument, the body
    Still straining to parrot
    The spirit, a being of air.

    4
    pinsky.tx.25M 1/17/11 10:56 PM Page 36 MASTER

    FROM THE LAST

    CANTO OF PARADISE

    (Paradiso XXXIII: 46–48, 52–66)

    As I drew nearer to the end of all desire,


    I brought my longing’s ardor to a final height,
    Just as I ought. My vision, becoming pure,

    Entered more and more the beam of that high light


    That shines on its own truth. From then, my seeing
    Became too large for speech, which fails at a sight

    Beyond all boundaries, at memory’s undoing—


    As when the dreamer sees and after the dream
    The passion endures, imprinted on his being

    Though he can’t recall the rest. I am the same:


    Inside my heart, although my vision is almost
    Entirely faded, droplets of its sweetness come

    The way the sun dissolves the snow’s crust—


    The way, in the wind that stirred the light leaves,
    The oracle that the Sibyl wrote was lost.

    36
    pinsky.tx.25M 1/17/11 10:56 PM Page 39 MASTER

    SAMURAI SONG

    When I had no roof I made


    Audacity my roof. When I had
    No supper my eyes dined.

    When I had no eyes I listened.


    When I had no ears I thought.
    When I had no thought I waited.

    When I had no father I made


    Care my father. When I had
    No mother I embraced order.

    When I had no friend I made


    Quiet my friend. When I had no
    Enemy I opposed my body.

    When I had no temple I made


    My voice my temple. I have
    No priest, my tongue is my choir.

    When I have no means fortune


    Is my means. When I have
    Nothing, death will be my fortune.

    Need is my tactic, detachment


    Is my strategy. When I had
    No lover I courted my sleep.
    39
    pinsky.tx.25M 1/17/11 10:56 PM Page 45 MASTER

    ABC

    Any body can die, evidently. Few


    Go happily, irradiating joy,

    Knowledge, love. Many


    Need oblivion, painkillers,
    Quickest respite.

    Sweet time unafflicted,


    Various world:

    X = your zenith.

    45

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