Selected Poems, Robert Pinsky, 2011

Selections from seven prior books from 1975-2007, these poems touch on eternal themes of aging and death, family and ancestors, childhood memories and adolescent longings, the good life lived, art and nature, baseball and Judaism, the immigrant and America. Suffused with classical Greek and Latin references and steeped in myth, there’s also a lot of growing up poor in New Jersey. Pinsky’s mother, disabled by a fall in his childhood, looms large. Jazz, especially the sax, is a major influence. Worth re-reading for their insights, lyrical beauty, superb phrasing (dying as the ‘change of changes’), and their clever language games, especially several abecedarian poems.