Pithy Poet Pinsky

The issue of "children's verse"– a concept rejected by Maurice Sendak and William Corley– is worth pondering. It's a marketing and retail category, and therefore an acquisition-editor's category . . . but that doesn't mean we have to accept it as a personal or literary category. To put it differently: niche, shmiche.

That's one of Robert Pinsky's responses to a comment on his Slate article, "Wild Child: The Best Poems for Kids aren't the Soft and Saccharine Ones."  Article (including...