The place of poetry in modern democracy is no place, according to conventional wisdom. The poet, we hear, is a casualty of mass entertainment and prosaic public culture, banished to the artistic sidelines to compose variations on insipid themes for a dwindling audience. Robert Pinsky, however, argues that this gloomy diagnosis is as wrongheaded as it is familiar. Pinsky, whose remarkable career as a poet itself undermines the view, writes that to portray poetry and democracy as enemies is to radically misconstrue both. The voice of poetry, he shows, resonates with profound themes at the very heart of democratic culture. There is no one in America better to write on this topic. One of the country's most accomplished poets, Robert Pinsky served an unprecedented two terms as America's Poet Laureate (1997-2000) and led the immensely popular multimedia Favorite Poem Project, which invited Americans to submit and read aloud their favorite poems. Pinsky draws on his experiences and on characteristically sharp and elegant observations of individual poems to argue that expecting poetry to compete with show business is to mistake its greatest democratic strength--its intimate, human scale--as a weakness. As an expression of individual voice, a poem implicitly allies itself with ideas about individual dignity that are democracy's bedrock, far more than is mass participation. Yet poems also summon up communal life.. Even the most inward-looking work imagines a reader. And in their rhythms and cadences poems carry in their very bones the illusion and dynamic of call and response. Poetry, Pinsky writes, cannot help but mediate between the inner consciousness of the individual reader and the outer world of other people. As part of the entertainment industry, he concludes, poetry will always be small and overlooked. As an art--and one that is inescapably democratic--it is massive and fundamental.

Review 47th Street Abc Of Culture Adoration Of The Moon Autobiography Battle Report Beyond The Demonic Element Blue Eyes The Bridge Brooklyn Heights: 1 Brooklyn Heights: 2 City City Portrait Cityscape Combat Comment Cry Of The Small Rabbits Cummings Curtains Cynthia Days And Nights Death Of A Grandmother Ditty Domestic Matters The End Feast Of The Ram's Horn For Delmore Schwartz For The Yiddish Singers In The Lakewood Hotels My Childhood For Wcw From A Chinese Master From An Autobiography From Martin Buber The Gift Of Remembering: 1 The Gift Of Remembering: 2 The Gift Of Remembering: 3 The Heart History In The Room The Intensity Interlude Italy, 1944 A Jerusalem Notebook: 1 A Jerusalem Notebook: 10 A Jerusalem Notebook: 11 A Jerusalem Notebook: 12 A Jerusalem Notebook: 13 A Jerusalem Notebook: 14 A Jerusalem Notebook: 15 A Jerusalem Notebook: 2. Postcard A Jerusalem Notebook: 3 A Jerusalem Notebook: 4. Tourists A Jerusalem Notebook: 5 A Jerusalem Notebook: 6 A Jerusalem Notebook: 7 A Jerusalem Notebook: 8. For C. R. A Jerusalem Notebook: 9. The Old Jewish Poet Floats ... July The Kingdom Last Things May 14, 1978 A Message From Rabbi Nachman Middle Class Monday Mountain Fire, Thornbush Muse Poem Musical Shuttle National Cold Storage Company News Of The World The Night Nightsounds A Notebook Notes At 46 Observations The Old Nostalgia Past Time Power In America The Prophet Announces The Realization Riding Westward Riverside Drive Saul's Progress Sister The Six Hundred Thousand Letters Spirit Of Rabbi Nachman Summer Sunday Morning The Synagogue On Kane Street The Talker Through The Boroughs Tides Tight Like That To The Teacher Two Cornell Deaths Vacation Poetry The Way Where I Am Now -- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® Product description Book by Shapiro, Harvey From Publishers Weekly This collection, which consists of new verse as well as selections from Shapiro's previous books, spans over 30 years, and reveals his evolution as artist and observer. An American urban poet with an informal style that is direct and often colloquial, he captures the essence of life in anxiety-ridden, overstimulating New York: "If you walk by the river, Manhattan / is like a book, the pages turn, / the words march down those pages. / Look back to the lights along the river. / Wait for the dark, wait for the city to come on, / windows and bridges blazing, / Whatever you needed was there, wasn't it?" With haunting insistence Shapiro, former editor of the New York Times Book Review , explores his ambivalence, pain and fascination regarding his Jewish lineage, childhood, women and marriage, fatherhood, and mortality: "I was conceived on the night / of my sister's funeral. / . . . This is family history. / What is unclear is my father's role. / Was the night of my sister's funeral / a suitable time for making love? / Did they both think that? / Or was my father excited by my mother's grief? / Though I honor my mother and father, / I want to ask a few more questions." He describes domestic life candidly and with considerable humor and humility, but his words are serious and linger. The length of the poems varies; many are spontaneous snippets of thought, others are longer, carefully crafted and, richer in texture and content, offer more of Shapiro's seasoned insight and tenacity of spirit. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Meticulous and deceptively simple, Shapiro's poems embody craft and concept. Had William Carlos Williams been Jewish, fought in World War II, and later lived in New York City, he might well have written poems like these. Though Shapiro offers a unique exploration of the American Jewish identity, what stands out in this collection are the love poems: "I believe we came together/ Out of ignorance not love." Shapiro's career in publishing (including editorship of The New York Times Book Review from 1975 to 1983) has overshadowed his poetry, but one comes away from this collection wishing it had inclu