The New Criterion

Robert Boyers and I seem to have been reading different poets, both named Robert Pinsky. The loopier moments of Gulf Music are embedded in poems much more cautious and mild mannered; but such moments are not exactly convincing, just as one night of karaoke does not a wild man make. Pinsky’s poetry is stolid where it should be searing, sincere where it might be savage; and his occasional attempts at a barbaric yawp (“Mallah walla tella bella”) sound like a yelp to me—it’s all just a little embarrassing. I’d rather watch Yvor Winters trying to break-dance.

My complaint is that even in the poems that are deadly serious, like the “Poem of Disconnected Parts,” it may not be enough merely to invoke Mandela’s imprisonment on Robben Island or the murder of the desaparecidos. Such shallow references underestimate the poet’s labor and condescend to what he means to honor. It’s as if Shakespeare had just said, “Agincourt ...

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