Poetry and the World

by Robert Pinsky

Essays discuss the relationship of poetry to the glamour and brutality of the world and the immediacy of American life

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

193 pages, Hardcover

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.