The first American poet laureate for three consecutive years (1997 to 2000), Pinsky succeeded in much more than poetry. In 1984, for example, he authored an interactive fiction game called Mindwheel; today he is poetry editor of the irreverent online magazine Slate. It is therefore not surprising that his poetry embraces modern life, while remaining firmly grounded in a traditional education in poetry and classics. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In The Figured Wheel, for example, Pinsky's poetry ranges from a look at a choking to a discussion of psychiatrists. His style, although variable, is readable and avoids much of the "coding", or deliberately obscure language, of other poets. His poem "Story of My Heart," for example, begins: A fat Christmas Waller in a rolled fur coat beaming from a taxi with two pretty girls each on one arm as he drove them through a thick, fluffy snowfall across Thirty-fourth Street to the busy crowd Shopping at Macy's: perfume, holly, snowflake displays. Chimes rang out demanding change. In Toys, where my mother worked (Pinsky, 1996, 123). Even in this short excerpt, Pinsky uses a number of poetic devices that deepen the poem while making it both comprehensive and aware of modern life. For example, the unusual choice of the word "Rolled" instantly gives the reader the feeling of a large man emerging exuberantly through the snow, perhaps with a sense of urgency or inexorability. The unnecessary capitalization of “Thirty-fourth Street” gives you an idea of ​​the importance of the time and place. The use of the colon is unexpected in the line "Shopping at Macy's:" - and the colon warns us that it is announcing what shopping at Macy's is for during the Christmas season. “The chimes rang for change” evokes the sound of cash registers and the clicking of coins, but it may have a different meaning. It may just as easily conjure up the image of bell ringers ringing the changes (each different pattern of bell ringing in a church is called a "change") in a cathedral. This is an interesting image, in keeping with the festive Christmas aura with which Pinsky begins this poem. Pinky's style in this collection is generally free verse, with occasional internal rhymes. However, he does not write prose. By using inversion, parallel constructions, allusions, and poetic language, Pinsky makes it clear that what he is writing is a poem, not a prose poem, or a poem trying to sound like prose. The poem "Ode to Sense" (which is an example of his broad subject matter - it is a philosophical questioning of symbols) shows that his poetry is not necessarily strictly measured or rhymed (the feet of the lines vary - 4 , 3, 3, 5, 5, 3), but always very musical and poetic. You too in laughter, warrior angel; Your helmet the zodiac, feathered rocket Your spear the beggar's finger pointing to the mouth Your heel planted on the snake Wording Your face a vapor, the crown of cigarette smoke crowning Bogart as he grimaces through it (Strand and Boland, 253) He uses anaphora, like the Bible, to make the lines sound, and this makes the large amount of information conveyed in this single stanza easier to digest and understand. His exploration of images and symbols continues until the end of the poem: Dire one, Desired one. Savior, judge - Absence, Or presence always at stake: May those who never died of hunger in yourshortage despise you. If I dare to denigrate Your harp of shadows, I taste wormwood and motor oil, I pour Ashes on my head. You are the wound. Be the medicine. (Strand and Boland, 254) Pinsky, it is clear, has a distinct ear for language. In one of his books of criticism, The Sounds of Poetry, he writes: "The medium of poetry is the human body: the column of air inside the chest, shaped into meaningful sounds in the larynx and the mouth.In this sense, poetry is an art as physical or corporeal as dance” (Summary, Pinsky, 1998). Pinsky believes that poetry must be experienced aurally. In this, he returns to the origins of poetry, when it was only an oral art. Despite the modern roots of Pinsky's poetry, many of his other works show that he clearly came from a poetic and classical background. For example, his translation of Dante's Inferno is discussed in its entirety, in English and Italian, but Pinsky resists. the original Italian convention of terza rima; as he explains, triple rhymes are extremely difficult in English. He rejects the terza rima and instead translates the entire poem into a "similar sounds" rhyming convention. solution and instead gives a more flexible definition of rhyme, or the type and degree of similar sounds that constitute rhyme. But on the other hand, I did not accept just any similar sound as rhyme: the translation is based on a fairly systematic rhyme standard which defines rhyme as the same consonant sounds – regardless of the differences between vowels – at the end of words. » He gives examples “say/feel/good” and “sleep/stop/get up” (Pinsky, 1994, xix). In this, Robert Pinsky innovates in a new type of rhyme, or at least refers to an old form. (consonance - (Abrams 9) "repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the intermediate vowel") and then limiting it to the final consonant. In this he accomplishes what he said, commenting on Landor's final consonant. poetry "One can be an 'innovator'... by reviving, adapting and developing traditional forms, just as much as by inventing" (Schmidt 388-389) did not invent a completely new type of rhyme for its translation of). the Inferno, but he appropriated the sound in a unique way and adapted it well to the English language. For example, he writes, My teaching; He who created all the features of Heaven In His transcendent wisdom gave them guides Thus each part shines on all the others, all the Illumination of nature is distributed. Likewise, for the goods Of the splendor of the world, He has assigned a guide And a minister - she, when the time seems appropriate, spreads (Pinsky, 1994, 57) The "like sounds" of the characteristics/of nature, goods/spread, plus the repetition of the guide(s) gives the stanzas a feeling of unity and musicality, without the "hard rhymes" that he explains in his Translator's Note (xix) and that he hate it so much. This is a new innovation, and to modern ears it sounds more poetic and less conversational than blank verse, but it also lacks the sing-song quality that hard, direct rhymes signify these days. Enjambment, even across stanzas, is common. in his Inferno and his own poetic works, such as "History of My Heart" (see above). It is perhaps curious that Pinsky chose such an extreme tangle, which seems to suggest a fragmentation of thought. In fact, this is part of his innovation against the singing character and conventionality of ancient forms. This enjambment leaves Pinsky free to make his similar rhymes, but does not limit his thought to the limit of his verse, whatever its length. "Wormwood and motor oil" - a substance)