Katha Pollitt writes that these are "extraordinarily accomplished and beautiful poems." Pinsky is a respected critic and translator and, as a poet, is a genius of sound and lineation. He also excels at the startling image, as when he describes a brain as "humming to itself, / Like a fat person eating M&Ms in the bathtub." The vividness of the image grabs our attention even as its poignancy and cruel edge complicate the tone of this intricate poem ("History of My Heart"). An impressive and moving collection.


From Publishers Weekly
To say that Pinsky's verse is thunderous is not to imply that it is loud and unbridled. Rather, like the true nature of thunder, each poem begins with a bolt to make its presence known (as with titles like "The Want Bone" and "Doctor Frolic" or such first lines as "Afternoon light like pollen"), rumbles on to strike primitive chords of religion and mythology in the reader's mind and winds down to a charged silence hanging on the coattails of a simple image. Brought together here are 16 new poems, the work of his four original collections and a sampling of his fine translations, including a canto from his well-received version of the Inferno. Taken as a whole, this is the record of a poet who grows from highly competent to near-transcendent, becomes more serious in tone while more complex in meter and enlivens everything from a baseball game to observations of his young daughter to an essay, in verse, on psychiatrists with a language that would be equally at home on vellum. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Three decades of "Pinsky's erudite and euphonious poetry" (LJ 4/1/96).Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Katha Pollitt
Robert Pinsky's extraordinarily accomplished and beautiful volume of collected poems, '"The Figured Wheel," will remind readers that here is a poet who, without forming a mini-movement or setting himself loudly at odds with the dominant tendencies of American poetry, has brought into it something new . . . What makes Mr. Pinsky such a rewarding and exciting writer is the sense he gives, in the very shape and structure of his poems, of getting at the depths of human experience, in which everything is always repeated but also always new.


Review
"Pinsky's decision to reprint his four previous volumes in their entirety, without revision, requires some daring: how many poets would not benefit from selection? Daring of one kind or another has always been a feature of Pinsky's work, although it showed itself first in his refusal to be daring in the easily recognizable ways represented by confessional poetry and surrealism, the modes that dominated poetic taste when Pinsky began publishing. In defiance of those fashions, Pinsky set out to write a sociable poetry of ordinary life, relying on earnest sentiment, rational exposition, and a certain modest cleverness. The results of that program still seem fresh today, twenty years after Sadness and Happiness, Pinsky's first book of poems, appeared in 1975."--Langdon Hammer, The Yale Review

"There are times in these poems when one feels . . . that what is presented as a kind of grand vision of humanity is a version of self-delight. As with Whitman [there is] a potential for coldness in Mr. Pinsky's wide-angle vision. Most of the time, though, the poems of his maturity manage their startling shifts and juxtapositions in ways that give intellectual and sensuous delight. . . . What makes Mr. Pinsky such a rewarding and exciting writer is the sense he gives, in the very shape and structure of his poems, of getting at the depths of human experience, in which everything is always repeated but also always new. The feathery and furry tribal gods, Jesus, Basho, the frail old people who came to his father for eyeglasses . . . and Robert Pinsky himself are all characters in a story that has no end, and possibly no ultimate meaning, either, but to which we listen spellbound because . . . it is our story."--Katha Pollitt, The New York Times Book Review

"Since the death of Robert Lowell in 1977, no single figure has dominated American poetry the way that Lowell, or before him Eliot, once did. . . . But among the many writers who have come of age in our fin de siecle, none have succeeded more completely as poet, critic, and translator, than Robert Pinsky."--James Longenbach, The Nation



Review
"Pinsky's decision to reprint his four previous volumes in their entirety, without revision, requires some daring: how many poets would not benefit from selection? Daring of one kind or another has always been a feature of Pinsky's work, although it showed itself first in his refusal to be daring in the easily recognizable ways represented by confessional poetry and surrealism, the modes that dominated poetic taste when Pinsky began publishing. In defiance of those fashions, Pinsky set out to write a sociable poetry of ordinary life, relying on earnest sentiment, rational exposition, and a certain modest cleverness. The results of that program still seem fresh today, twenty years after Sadness and Happiness, Pinsky's first book of poems, appeared in 1975."--Langdon Hammer, The Yale Review

"There are times in these poems when one feels . . . that what is presented as a kind of grand vision of humanity is a version of self-delight. As with Whitman [there is] a potential for coldness in Mr. Pinsky's wide-angle vision. Most of the time, though, the poems of his maturity manage their startling shifts and juxtapositions in ways that give intellectual and sensuous delight. . . . What makes Mr. Pinsky such a rewarding and exciting writer is the sense he gives, in the very shape and structure of his poems, of getting at the depths of human experience, in which everything is always repeated but also always new. The feathery and furry tribal gods, Jesus, Basho, the frail old people who came to his father for eyeglasses . . . and Robert Pinsky himself are all characters in a story that has no end, and possibly no ultimate meaning, either, but to which we listen spellbound because . . . it is our story."--Katha Pollitt, The New York Times Book Review

"Since the death of Robert Lowell in 1977, no single figure has dominated American poetry the way that Lowell, or before him Eliot, once did. . . . But among the many writers who have come of age in our fin de siecle, none have succeeded more completely as poet, critic, and translator, than Robert Pinsky."--James Longenbach, The Nation



Review
"Pinsky's decision to reprint his four previous volumes in their entirety, without revision, requires some daring: how many poets would not benefit from selection? Daring of one kind or another has always been a feature of Pinsky's work, although it showed itself first in his refusal to be daring in the easily recognizable ways represented by confessional poetry and surrealism, the modes that dominated poetic taste when Pinsky began publishing. In defiance of those fashions, Pinsky set out to write a sociable poetry of ordinary life, relying on earnest sentiment, rational exposition, and a certain modest cleverness. The results of that program still seem fresh today, twenty years after Sadness and Happiness, Pinsky's first book of poems, appeared in 1975."--Langdon Hammer, The Yale Review

"There are times in these poems when one feels . . . that what is presented as a kind of grand vision of humanity is a version of self-delight. As with Whitman [there is] a potential for coldness in Mr. Pinsky's wide-angle vision. Most of the time, though, the poems of his maturity manage their startling shifts and juxtapositions in ways that give intellectual and sensuous delight. . . . What makes Mr. Pinsky such a rewarding and exciting writer is the sense he gives, in the very shape and structure of his poems, of getting at the depths of human experience, in which everything is always repeated but also always new. The feathery and furry tribal gods, Jesus, Basho, the frail old people who came to his father for eyeglasses . . . and Robert Pinsky himself are all characters in a story that has no end, and possibly no ultimate meaning, either, but to which we listen spellbound because . . . it is our story."--Katha Pollitt, The New York Times Book Review

"Since the death of Robert Lowell in 1977, no single figure has dominated American poetry the way that Lowell, or before him Eliot, once did. . . . But among the many writers who have come of age in our fin de siecle, none have succeeded more completely as poet, critic, and translator, than Robert Pinsky."--James Longenbach, The Nation



Book Description
The Figured Wheel fully collects the first four books of poetry, as well as twenty-one new poems, by Robert Pinsky, the former U.S. Poet Laureate.

Critic Hugh Kenner, writing about Pinsky's first volume, described this poet's work as "nothing less than the recovery for language of a whole domain of mute and familiar experience." Both the transformation of the familiar and the uttering of what has been hitherto mute or implicit in our culture continue to be central to Pinsky's art. New poems like "Avenue" and "The City Elegies" envision the urban landscape's mysterious epitome of human pain and imagination, forces that recur in "Ginza Samba," an astonishing history of the saxophone, and "Impossible to Tell," a jazz-like work that intertwines elegy with both the Japanese custom of linking-poems and the American tradition of ethnic jokes. A final section of translations includes Pinsky's renderings of poems by Czeslaw Milosz, Paul Celan, and others, as well as the last canto of his award-winning version of the Inferno.

ANNOTATION

Three decades of "Pinsky's erudite and euphonious poetry" -Library Journal

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Robert Pinsky's The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996 gathers together all his poetry to date, including twenty-one new poems. The critic Hugh Kenner, writing about Pinsky's first volume, described this poet's project as "nothing less than the recovery for language of a whole domain of mute and familiar experience." Transformation of the familiar and uttering of what had been mute or implicit within culture continue to be central to Pinsky's art. New poems like "Avenue" and "The City Elegies" envision the city's mysterious epitome of human pain and imagination, forces that recur in "Ginza Samba," an astonishing history of the saxophone, and "Impossible to Tell," a jazz-like work that intertwines elegy with the Japanese custom of linking-poems and the American tradition of ethnic jokes. A final section of translations includes renderings of poems by Czeslaw Milosz, Paul Celan, and others, as well as the last canto of Pinsky's award-winning version of the Inferno.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly