Sadness and Happiness

Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets

by Robert Pinsky

From Sadness and Poems by Robert Pinsky :
CEREMONY FOR ANY BEGINNING


Robert Pinsky
?


Against weather, and the random
Harpies--mood, circumstance, the laws
Of biography, chance, physics--
The unseasonable soul holds forth,
Eager for form as a renowned
Pedant, the emperor's man of worth,
Hereditary arbiter of manners.


Soul, one's life is one's enemy.
As the small children learn, what happens
Takes over, and what you were goes away.
They learn it in sardonic soft
Comments of the weather, when it sharpens
The hard surfaces of light
Winds, vague in direction, like blades


Lavishing their brilliant strokes
All over a wrecked house,
The nude wallpaper and the brute
Intelligence of the torn pipes.
Therefore when you marry or build
Pray to be untrue to the plain
Dominance of your own weather, how it keeps


Going even in the woods when not
A soul is there, and how it implies
Always that separate, cold
Splendidness, uncouth and unkind--
On chilly, unclouded mornings,
Torrential sunlight and moist air,
Leafage and solid bark breathing the mist.

Genres: Poetry

74 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

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

[Ally Armistead · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first time I read anything by Robert Pinksy I was a senior in college in a medieval literature class that focused exclusively on Dante. Pinsky's translation of Dante's "Inferno" was the recommended translation, and it was an absolute joy to read. I had read multiple translations of Dante's most famous poem, and yet Pinsky's was by far the best of them all: the most colorful, the most evocative. In short, wonderful.

Ever since my study of his translation, I've sought out other poems by Robert Pinsky, so reading "Sadness and Happiness" was a given.

While Pinsky shines in whatever he does, this collection, unfortunately, was not my favorite of his work. There are pockets of genius, particularly in his descriptions of small suburban settings, and the cold, frigid scenes of their lives. His longest poem, "Essays on Psychology" is a most inventive way of postulating the nature of modern counseling, but it would have fared better--in my opinion--as a straight forward exposition.

The overall collection doesn't seem quite unified or even, with some poems bursting with beauty, while others are too clinical. Still, this is Robert Pinsky we're talking about, so for all his fans, this is worth reading.

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadness and Happiness is a book of understated vision, but much of the poetry (such as the long last poem "Essay on Psychiatrists") feels driven by their ideas rather than by a sense of wonder about language and where it can lead. Pinsky, though, brings a complicated sense of diction and linguistic possibility into the poems even if sometimes they seem secondary.

[Carl Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pinsky is a highly recognized poet. Among his accolades is the admiration of my eldest child, and if he doesn't resonate with me it's my issue not his.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Pinksy is hit and miss as a poet, because I either really like what he's writing or I'm not impressed at all. I was scared to see that there were two very long poems in this rather short collection (well, short compared to what I've been reading lately), but they both were much better than I thought they would be (although I feel a rebuttal poem coming on for "Sadness and Happiness").

The short poems weren't necessarily earth-shatteringly amazing or enlightening, so none really stood out to me, but they were still pretty good. Pinsky has a pretty consistent format and rhythm to his poems that carries them all nicely.

Overall, I just feel like Pinksy was better thirty years ago than he is now. But I'll save a final judgment of him until after I've read more of his work.

[Parissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Sentences

Reading the sentences, November sun
Touching the avenues, offices, the station,
I saw you pass me on the street, your face
Was pink with cold, cold windows flashed, the stores
And cars were like -- mythology --, the street
Itself was glamorous and lost, it was
As though I never knew you yet somehow knew
That this was you, a sentence interdicted
The present, it said, you never knew, you passed,
Leaves coppery and quick as lizards moved
Around your delicate ankles; November sun
Lay on the sidewalk, ordinary and final
As the sentences too flat for any poem.

[Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

As one of the other reviewers said, I found this book uneven. There were a few that struck a chord in me and a few that just fell completely flat. This is my first Pinsky, and I have two other chapbook-length collections of his to read next (all of which come after this collection, chronologically). We shall see if my review changes after further reading of this poet.