Add BookmarkGulf Music: Poems
Dollars, dolors. Callings and contrivances. King Zulu. Comus.
Sephardic ju-ju and verses. Voodoo mojo, Special Forces.
Henry formed a group named Professor Longhair and his
Shuffling Hungarians. After so much renunciation
And invention, is this the image of the promised end?
All music haunted by all the music of the dead forever.
Becky haunted forever by Pearl the daughter she abandoned
For love, O try my tra-la-la, ma la belle, mah walla-woe.
—from “Gulf MusicR... (show more)
Dollars, dolors. Callings and contrivances. King Zulu. Comus.
Sephardic ju-ju and verses. Voodoo mojo, Special Forces.
Henry formed a group named Professor Longhair and his
Shuffling Hungarians. After so much renunciation
And invention, is this the image of the promised end?
All music haunted by all the music of the dead forever.
Becky haunted forever by Pearl the daughter she abandoned
For love, O try my tra-la-la, ma la belle, mah walla-woe.
—from “Gulf Music”
An improvised, even desperate music, yearning toward knowledge across a gulf, informs Robert Pinsky’s first book of poetry since Jersey Rain (2000).
On the large scale of war or the personal scale of family history, in the movements of people and cultures across oceans or between eras, these poems discover connections between things seemingly disparate.
Gulf Music is perhaps the most ambitious, politically impassioned, and inventive book by this major American poet. (show less)
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Pinsky is one of those demi-gods of literature: a Poet/Translator/Critic/Academic who seems to know everything and wants to know more. I saw him read not too long ago and his knowledge of history and culture blew my mind. What makes this book, and all his books, worth while is the way he's able to take pieces of ideas and feelings from around the world and use them to craft almost perfect poems. Granted, because of the large jumps the poems make in subject matter, they can be a little dauntin... (show more)
Pinsky is one of those demi-gods of literature: a Poet/Translator/Critic/Academic who seems to know everything and wants to know more. I saw him read not too long ago and his knowledge of history and culture blew my mind. What makes this book, and all his books, worth while is the way he's able to take pieces of ideas and feelings from around the world and use them to craft almost perfect poems. Granted, because of the large jumps the poems make in subject matter, they can be a little daunting to read at first. Pinsky avoids this by always creating strong emotional undercurrents that the reader can feel immediately and grab on to. In this volume in particular, Pinsky deals with the idea of forgeting: how forgeting for the individual is not a product of time and old age, but a process of selective memory that is our attempt to shape the perception of our lives. He also signifies America's current strained relationship with the world and the problems of identity that come from being a superpower with declining returns. On top of it all, his narrative voice is always clear and percise, while containing a knowledge and feel for rhythm I haven't really seen in any other contemporary poet. Buy it. (show less)
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Pinsky is a master. While I enjoyed "Jersey Rain" more, this is still marvelous.
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