Selected poems

This collection selects some of the best poetry by a three time former U.S. poet laureate and winner of the William Carlos Williams Prize. Intense verbal music with a jazz feeling; invention against the grain of expectation; intelligence racing among materials with the variety of a busy street, these have been the qualities of Robert Pinsky's work since his first book, Sadness and Happiness (1975), celebrated for setting a new direction in American poetry. At that time, responding to a question about that book, he said: "I would like to write a poetry which could contain every kind of thing, while keeping all the excitement of poetry." That ambition was realized in a new way with each of his books, including the book length personal monologue An Explanation of America; the transformed autobiography of History of My Heart; the bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante; and, most recently, the savage, inventive Gulf Music.