Proverbs of Limbo: Poems

by Robert Pinsky

A new book of poems by the three-time poet laureate Robert Pinsky, a writer "rarely equalled" (Louise Glück).

Robert Pinsky, one of our most ambitious, inventive, and finely tuned poets, takes an original approach to the fraught, central matter of borders in Proverbs of Limbo, his first new book of poetry in eight years.

In this collection, the poet mines and maps limbal those spaces between differences that can be at once creative and oppressive, enlightening and dark, exciting and fatal. For Pinsky, they include the familiar borders between demographic categories, as well as limbal realities that are more personal—clashing ways of understanding, personal history and world history, health and illness, freedom and compulsion, intimacy and community, personality and culture—all the countless variations of in-between.

The title Proverbs of Limbo tips its hat, at an angle, to the great poet William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell. Blake’s jagged, contrary proverbs resist, from within, the binary rights and wrongs of conventional “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”; “The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”

Here, Pinsky embodies a different resistance to different conventions of understanding. “The Buddha,” begins the title poem, “is a liquor store / On a busy corner.”

Genres: Poetry

67 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 11, 2024

About the author

Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of which are collections of his own poetry. His published work also includes critically acclaimed translations, including The Inferno of Dante Alighieri and The Separate Notebooks by Czesław Miłosz. He teaches at Boston University and is the poetry editor at Slate.
wikipedia

Reviews

[Arielle Stern]

I liked this, and I very much enjoyed reading it, but it’s hard for me to “rate” contemporary poetry, so I’ll leave out a star rating. I think it’s difficult because I know the poetry can be quality or can be “good” (small “g”), as I think this book is, but it doesn’t seemed concerned with the Good. So I like it and don’t think it should be rated lowly at all, but it’s no longer so much about things fundamental. It’s more about experience and observation, which I think has its place too and isn’t a failure of the book—it’s simply a different “goal” of contemporary poets, and I think this book accomplished that well. In that sense, it is a very good book, and I’d rate it highly on that point. But I’m not completely interested in that. The interior world tapped into in this book and a lot of contemporary poetry it seems is the world of self not soul. Just a different aim.

[Leonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

About this 2024 publication, Troy Jollimore of the Washington Post writes, " Sadness and happiness, beauty and ugliness, peace and violence - each has its place in Pinsky's capacious poetry, for its universe is the one in which we all live." Pinsky has written numerous books of poetry and about poetry. He was poet laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2000.

[The_J · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of pieces, I give props to many attempts, even if not much glory.


...
Grief: with its countless different ways and strains.
Glory: a greater thing than success, but slower.

[chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clashes of theocracies.
The annals of begats and the orders of
Names both balance on the triple pillars
Of Identity of Mystery of Law, all bound
And refuted by the cardboard belt
God wears to amuse the angels.
-- "Proverbs of Limbo"

[J]

My first Pinsky collection. Lots of name dropping and references I didn’t understand. I probably wont remember any of these, but my favorites were At Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Vocal, Not Minding, Beach Glass, and Being a Ghost.

I liked how At Mt. Auburn Cemetery mixed memories with the present.

[Anja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful audio production with music

[Francescajemm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the way his narrators can use the past to explore such contemporary concerns.

[Beans]

What the hell?