First Things to Hand: Poems

by Robert Pinsky

“Pinsky has . . . the magician's dazzling quickness fused with subtle intelligence, a taste for tasks and assignments to which he devises ingenious solutions.”—Louise Glück In these new poems the humble objects of everyday life—door, photograph, newspaper, pen, book—become artifacts pointing to the very center of human difference. Robert Pinsky ’s books include The Want Bone , The Figured Collected Poems 1966-1996 , and Jersey Rain . Among his awards are the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. From 1997 to 2000 he was the US Poet Laureate. He currently teaches at Boston University.

Genres: Poetry

24 pages, Chapbook

First published January 1, 2006

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

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A completely devastating chapbook. Pinsky's aesthetic here has evolved into a terse and uncompromising poetic language, full of emotion and strange juxtapositions. Those only familiar with his anthology pieces might find First Things to Hand a little off-putting, but his reach and investigation are largely the same, only presenting their conclusions in a new light. Great stuff, and well worth it.

[Mark]

I know Pinsky was a recent poet laureate but I did not find this to my taste at all. There was only one stanza in one poem that spoke to me. In other words, this is the 2nd worst—to my taste—book of poems I have read. There was another book that I gave up on about 1/3rd of the way in during this time frame but I did not record it.

[Deann Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

The little chapbook that could. This slim volume taught me how to read poetry.

[Philip Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

these poems also appear in the later edition, Gulf Music, but this lovely little broadside is gorgeous!