Poetry And The World

by Robert Pinsky

A collection of sharp, entertaining, and informative essays by poet Robert Pinsky, Poetry and the World is a passionate inquiry into poetry's place in the modem world. Combining the arts of criticism and autobiography, Pinsky writes about poets as diverse as Walt VVhitman and Philip Freneau, Marianne Moore and Frank O'Hara, about a visit to Poland during the early days of Solidarity, and his own childhood in a seedy New Jersey resort town. The scope and diversity of these essays confirm Pinsky's stature as not only one of our best poets, but as a perceptive and engaging critic as well.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Essays, Criticism

208 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 1988

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.
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Reviews

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have no doubt to Pinsky's intelligence, and surely no doubt about his poetry and his sense of poetics, but there is a stiffness to the prose in these essays that didn't engage me with the work. I felt, more often than not, like I was at a lecture as opposed to in a conversation. Smart, sometimes insightful, but not moving.