Impassioned, Personal Poems From America's Poet Laureate
"It spends itself regardless into the ocean. It stains and scours and makes things dark or bright: Sweat of the moon, a shroud of benediction, The chilly liquefaction of day to night,
The Jersey rain, my rain, soaks all as one: It smites Metuchen, Rahway, Saddle River, Fair Haven, Newark, Little Silver, Bayonne. I feel it churning even in fair weather
To craze distinction, dry the same as wet." --from "Jersey Rain"
Jersey Rain--at once masterly and intimate--marks a fresh, lyrical stage of Robert Pinsky's work. Poems like "Samurai Song," "ABC," "Ode to Meaning," "To Television," and "The Green Piano" have already attracted a wide readership. Now, assembled in this book, they become part of a larger, fugue-like meditation on the themes of a life guided by Hermes: deity of music and deception, escort of the dead, inventor of instruments, the brilliant messenger and trickster of heaven.
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Jersey Rain: Poems
Impassioned, Personal Poems From America's Poet Laureate
"It spends itself regardless into the ocean. It stains and scours and makes things dark or bright: Sweat of the moon, a shroud of benediction, The chilly liquefaction of day to night,
The Jersey rain, my rain, soaks all as one: It smites Metuchen, Rahway, Saddle River, Fair Haven, Newark, Little Silver, Bayonne. I feel it churning even in fair weather
To craze distinction, dry the same as wet." --from "Jersey Rain"
Jersey Rain--at once masterly and intimate--marks a fresh, lyrical stage of Robert Pinsky's work. Poems like "Samurai Song," "ABC," "Ode to Meaning," "To Television," and "The Green Piano" have already attracted a wide readership. Now, assembled in this book, they become part of a larger, fugue-like meditation on the themes of a life guided by Hermes: deity of music and deception, escort of the dead, inventor of instruments, the brilliant messenger and trickster of heaven.
Impassioned, Personal Poems From America's Poet Laureate
"It spends itself regardless into the ocean. It stains and scours and makes things dark or bright: Sweat of the moon, a shroud of benediction, The chilly liquefaction of day to night,
The Jersey rain, my rain, soaks all as one: It smites Metuchen, Rahway, Saddle River, Fair Haven, Newark, Little Silver, Bayonne. I feel it churning even in fair weather
To craze distinction, dry the same as wet." --from "Jersey Rain"
Jersey Rain--at once masterly and intimate--marks a fresh, lyrical stage of Robert Pinsky's work. Poems like "Samurai Song," "ABC," "Ode to Meaning," "To Television," and "The Green Piano" have already attracted a wide readership. Now, assembled in this book, they become part of a larger, fugue-like meditation on the themes of a life guided by Hermes: deity of music and deception, escort of the dead, inventor of instruments, the brilliant messenger and trickster of heaven.
Robert Pinsky is Poet Laureate of the United States. His collected poems, The Figured Wheel, were published in 1996. He is the recipient of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award of the Academy of American Poets for his translation The Inferno of Dante. His Sounds of Poetry (1998) was nominated for a National Book Award in Criticism. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston Uiversity and lives with his wife, Ellen, in Newton, Massachusetts. Robert Pinsky is the author of several books of poetry, including Gulf Music, Jersey Rain, The Want Bone, The Figured Wheel, and At the Foundling Hospital. His bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante sets a modern standard. He was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2000. Among his awards and honors are the William Carlos Williams Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Korean Manhae Prize, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the PEN American Center. He teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Boston University.
When I had no roof I made Audacity my roof. When I had No supper my eyes dined.
When I had no eyes I listened. When I had no ears I thought. When I had no thought I waited.
When I had no father I made Care my father. When I had No mother I embraced order.
When I had no friend I made Quiet my friend. When I had no Enemy I opposed my body.
When I had no temple I made My voice my temple. I have No priest, my tongue is my choir.
When I have no means fortune Is my means. When I have Nothing, death will be my fortune.
Need is my tactic, detachment Is my strategy. When I had No lover I courted my sleep.
Vessel
What is this body as I fall asleep again? What I pretended it was when I was small
A crowded vessel, a starship or submarine Dark in its dark element, a breathing hull,
Arms at the flanks, the engine heart and brain Pulsing, feet pointed like a diver's, the whole
Resolutely diving through the oblivion Of night with living cargo. O carrier shell
That keeps your trusting passengers from All: Some twenty thousand times now you have gone
Out into blackness tireless as aseal, Blind always as a log, but plunging on
Across the reefs of coral that scrape the keel O veteran immersed from toe to crown,
Buoy the population of the soul Toward their destination before they drown.
Ode to Meaning
Dire one and desired one, Savior, sentencer
In an old allegory you would carry A chained alphabet of tokens:
Ankh Badge Cross. Dragon, Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio, Jasper kinema of legendary Mind, Naked omphalos pierced By quills of rhyme or sense, torah-like: unborn Vein of will, xenophile Yearning out of Zero.
Untrusting I court you. Wavering I seek your face, I read That Crusoe's knife Reeked of you, that to defile you The soldier makes the rabbi spit on the torah. "I'll drown my book" says Shakespeare.
Drowned walker, revenant. After my mother fell on her head, she became More than ever your sworn enemy. She spoke Sometimes like a poet or critic of forty years later. Or she spoke of the world as Thersites spoke of the heroes, "I think they have swallowed one another. I Would laugh at that miracle."
You also in the laughter, warrior angel: Your helmet the zodiac, rocket-plumed Your spear the beggar's finger pointing to the mouth Your heel planted on the serpent Formulation Your face a vapor, the wreath of cigarette smoke crowning Bogart as he winces through it.
You not in the words, not even Between the words, but a torsion, A cleavage, a stirring.
You stirring even in the arctic ice, Even at the dark ocean floor, even In the cellular flesh of a stone.
Gas. Gossamer. My poker friends Question your presence In a poem by me, passing the magazine One to another.
Not the stone and not the words, you Like a veil over Arthur's headstone, The passage from Proverbs he chose While he was too ill to teach And still well enough to read, I was Beside the master craftsman Delighting him day after day, ever At play in his presenceyou
A soothing veil of distraction playing over Dying Arthur playing in the hospital, Thumbing the Bible, fuzzy from medication, Ever courting your presence. And you the prognosis, You in the cough.
Gesturer, when is your spur, your cloud? You in the airport rituals of greeting and parting. Indicter, who is your claimant? Bell at the gate. Spiderweb iron bridge. Cloak, video, aroma, rue, what is your Elected silence, where was your seed?
What is Imagination But your lost child born to give birth to you?
Dire one. Desired one. Savior, sentencer
Absence, Or presence ever at play: Let those scorn you who never Starved in your dearth. If I Dare to disparage Your harp of shadows I taste Wormwood and motor oil, I pour Ashes on my head. You are the wound. You Be the medicine.
Autumn Quartet On my birthday
I
Others are not the medicine for loneliness When I was a child, I wanted to be a knight: Helmeted, living by a noble code Above the crowd, to serve, to carry a sword And a shield blazoned with symbolic meanings: Arrogant and generous like Launcelot du Lac, The abducted infant and uncompanioned hero. Did part of me grow up to be a type? Those melancholy males who nearly twitch With yearning for their silver armor, misplaced. Humorless. Often the inviting lady, Fatigued by all his brooding, slips away.
II
But somehow it was also all mixed up With Washington astride his horse, the ardor Of Lafayette, the elegant sad jokes Of Lincoln, who freed the slaves and demonstrated That Nature's were the only real noblemen: It was the assassin that craved the coat of arms. In his mid-fifties, a chevalier of care, It was heroic to scribble on the train The speech that disappointed many people: Too strange, too brief. And then they called it "great." Solitary in a vivid dream he saw his mourners, His coffin swagged in bunting, the marble hall.
III
Older than Odysseus, older than Leopold Bloom. Older than number forty-two wasJack Roosevelt Robinsonwhen I watched him crouch Trembling on the basepath between first and second With arms extended, taunting the opponent. And now older than he was the day he died Depleted by his solitary ordeal, A public man. In momentary wonder, I see him burning again, beyond me, playing A boyish country game in the gaping cities: Brooklyn, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Boston. Nineteen-nineteen to nineteen-seventy-two.
IV
The heroes of antiquity were taught By centaurs, ancient creatures who were half Rational intelligence, half intuition: Bearded and hooved, all male, a dying race, Each solitary as the lawless Cyclops, But pedagogical and bound by nature To pass their lonely double knowledge on To such as Odysseus, who learned to tell the story Of his life, couched in as many lies as needed. Among the epic bravos, a civic man. The centaurs showed him truth in fabulation, In every living city the haunted ruin.
ABC
Any body can die, evidently. Few Go happily, irradiating joy,
Knowledge, love. Many Need oblivion, painkillers, Quickest respite.
Title Page, Copyright Notice, Dedication, Samurai Song, Vessel, Ode to Meaning, Autumn Quartet, ABC, An Alphabet of My Dead, The Haunted Ruin, To the Phoenix, A Phonebook Cover Hermes of the Nineteen-forties, The Cycles, Porch Steps, The Superb Lily, Summer in Saratoga Springs, To Television, The Green Piano, Machines, Victrola, Song, Steel Drum Variations, The Hall, The Tragic Chorus, In Memory of Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, Biography, At the Worcester Museum, The Knight's Prayer, Jersey Rain, About the Author, By Robert Pinsky, Copyright,