heartbreak translation explanation convergence

books:

17 reviews
Robert Pinsky

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999

Excellent introduction
Robert Pinsky's The Sounds of Poetry is an invaluable guide to the most critical--and one of the most neglected--aspects of poetic writing: sound. I first read this book when taking an undergrad poetry-writing course, and I found it immensely helpful. Pinsky takes a great deal of potentially clunky, academic information and distills it into a fast, easily-digestible handbook. In just over 100 ...

Poems to Read: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology

3 reviews

W. W. Norton & Company, 2002

"Bring me the sunflower crazy with the light..."
I am absolutely blown away by the quality of this anthology! Absolutely blown away. Organized by the people behind the Favorite Poem Project ... this beautiful book strikes the perfect poetic balance; the poems here have depth and meaning, but they are never impenetrable and are always a joy to read aloud. The mainstays are all here: Shakespeare, Dickinson, Whitman, Keats, Frost, etc., but the ...

Jersey Rain: Poems

6 reviews
Robert Pinsky

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001

Hey, man--I'm from Jersey too
A thin volume, full of jewles--dark-colored jewles, like rubies and emeralds, lit by candlelight inside a church. The secret to reading a Pinsky poem is to read it very slowly, out loud, annunciating each syllable as though it were its own line: you will realize that the slimness of this book is misleading. Pinsky seems to construct each of his poems out of perfect sound, so carefully that ...

The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996

11 reviews
Robert Pinsky

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997

solid, solid work
I guess his work is so controversial because it's so thoroughly formalist in a time of experimentation. He is a very feeling person, a poet of feeling & great genius. He addresses all sorts of themes in these poems. All sorts, from the serenely bucolic [he sometimes begins poems by showing the reader that he's been sure to learn things about what he uses for images) to overtly sexual ...

The Situation of Poetry

1 review
Robert Pinsky

Princeton University Press, 1978

Neat piece!
Robert Pinsky gave our commencement speech at Stanford in 1999. Captivated by his wit and eloquence I got a copy of this book but promptly misplaced it in a move. Only recently did I have a chance to read it and how satisfying was the experience! Not only did Pinsky help me see some old favorites, such as John Keat's "Ode to a Nightingale", from a distinctively fresh perspective, he also ...

An Invitation to Poetry: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology

11 reviews

W. W. Norton & Company, 2004

A Superb Poetry Anthology With Accompanying DVD
Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, founded the Favorite Poem Project shortly after the Library of Congress appointed him to the post in 1997. Since its inception, the Project has been dedicated to celebrating, documenting and promoting poetry's role in Americans' lives. "An Invitation to Poetry: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology" is the third volume of Pinsky's ...

The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation, Bilingual Edition

48 reviews
Dante

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history. Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) "Devine Comedy" weaved together aspects of biblical and classical Greek literary traditions to produce one of the most important works of not only medieval literature, but also one of the great literary works of Western civilization. The full impact of this 14,000-line poem divided into 100 ...

Gulf Music: Poems

1 review
Robert Pinsky

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008

perhaps his best
Pinsky is an amazing poet and this is a strong collection. Some of the poems were published in a chap book recently which I had already purchased awhile back. Still, the rest of the poems were so enjoyable I had to pick this up, too. If you like contemporary poetry (yeah, what does that mean?), especially with a political flavor, this may be just what you are looking for.

Americans' Favorite Poems

15 reviews

W. W. Norton & Company, 1999

"Americans' Favorite Poems" Is My Favorite Poetry Anthology!
Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, founded the Favorite Poem Project. Since its inception, the Project has been dedicated to celebrating, documenting and promoting poetry's role in Americans' lives. During a one-year open call for submissions, 18,000 Americans wrote to the project volunteering to share their favorite poems - Americans from ages 5 to 97, from every state, ...

The Life of David

8 reviews
Robert Pinsky

Schocken, 2005

A poetic riff on a famous life
Reading Robert Pinsky's work, one finds great difficulty placing the book in any particular genre. Biographic analysis of biblical characters seems something of a rage at the moment, some excellent, some not. "The Life of David," however, does not fit well with the genre. Unlike the Biblical scholar Baruch Halperin's brilliant "David's Secret Demons" Pinsky eschews footnotes or deep textual ...

History of My Heart: Poems

2 reviews
Robert Pinsky

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998

Strong, accessible work
Want to check out some poetry that won't blind you with its self-importance? Give Pinksy a whirl. He wasn't poet laureate for nothing, and this volume shows why: his work is everyday-ish, regular images told in regular language, but stacked in such a way that the power of the images play movies in your head with every turn of the page. The book gets off to a ripping start and calms down from ...

The Want Bone (American Poetry Series)
Robert Pinsky

Ecco, 1991

The Inferno
Dante, 1995

Borders Classics 4 CD

An Explanation of America (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets)

1 review
Robert Pinsky

Princeton University Press, 1979

A search for identity that contains all seeds of generality
Pinsky sifts through images and myths from both outside and inside America, alternating between the conventional and the idiosyncratic, reaching into the past towards the future, testing the limits of each framework. He always seems centered in the experiential but, almost always, works at arm's length. He really wants to encompass it all, and the scale of his ambition adds dignity to his ...

The Handbook of Heartbreak: 101 Poems of Lost Love and Sorrow

2 reviews
Robert Pinsky

William Morrow, 1998

perfect companion for a post-breakup pity party
This little treasure can lead you through the gamut of emotions. I keep it on my nightstand, crawling into it when I'm feeling unloved and alone. There's something about the physical book itself -- small, thin, with the poems printed on beautiful deckle-edged paper in an elegant font -- that invites you to pick it up, hold it. The poetry within is mournful, painful, emotional -- a fine ...

Sadness and Happiness
Robert Pinsky

Princeton University Press, 1975

"Remarkable. . . . What [these poems] are attempting is important: nothing less than the recovery for language of a whole domain of mute and familiar experience."--Hugh Kenner, ^IThe Los Angeles Times Book Review^N "It is refreshing to find a poet who is intellectually interesting and technically first-rate. Robert Pinsky belongs to that rarest category of talents, a poet- critic."--Robert Lowell "The pleasures of Pinsky . . . are the ...

A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by Joseph Cornell

5 reviews
John Burghardt, Mary Caponegro, ...

D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2001

the blackbird whistling
I received this book from an old friend who I hadn't seen in nearly twenty years--she showed up unannounced, spent a few hours sitting in the sun, and then disappeared just as unexpectedly. I still don't know if she meant to leave the book behind, but I've decided that I won't give it up. Cornell's boxes have a strange beauty that seems to attract strange birds--deceptively simple, at first you ...

Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry (The University Center for Human Values Series)

6 reviews
Robert Pinsky

Princeton University Press, 2002

A great short read
Short, punchy, and nicely designed. Pinsky doesn't waste words. If you want to read a modern manifesto in defence of poetry, this is it. It's easy to dump on Pinsky because he's in the public eye so much, but this at least shows he's there because he has a brain. And who can complain about a poet being a star?

The Inferno of Dante

State Street Press, 1994

Fantabulous unabridged reading by Audie Award winner George Guidall; 40 year veteran of the stage! Even better this five and a half hour masterpiece is a sparkling new translation by Robert Pinsky, the American poet. It preserves the burning clarity and universal relavance of the 13th century original in this 21st century world. Since he is an american, as is the narrator, what results is the pan ultimate production, espcially from the American ...

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