An Explanation of America
1st Edition
Published on 24. August 2020
80 pages
978-0-691-21512-9 (ISBN)
Description
From An Explanation of America:
LAIR
Robert Pinsky
Inexhaustible, delicate, as if
Without source or medium, daylight
Undoes the mind; the infinite,
Empty actual is too bright,
Scattering to where the road
Whispers, through a mile of woods .
Later, how quiet the house is:
Dusk-like and refined,
The sweet Phoebe-note
Piercing from the trees;
The calm globe of the morning,
Things to read or to write
Ranged on a table; the brain
A dark, stubborn current that breathes
Blood, a deaf wadding,
The hands feeding it paper
And sensations of wood or metal
On its own terms. Trying to read
I persist a while, finish the recognition
By my breath of a dead giant's breath--
Stayed by the space of a rhythm,
Witnessing the blue gulf of the air.
LAIR
Robert Pinsky
Inexhaustible, delicate, as if
Without source or medium, daylight
Undoes the mind; the infinite,
Empty actual is too bright,
Scattering to where the road
Whispers, through a mile of woods .
Later, how quiet the house is:
Dusk-like and refined,
The sweet Phoebe-note
Piercing from the trees;
The calm globe of the morning,
Things to read or to write
Ranged on a table; the brain
A dark, stubborn current that breathes
Blood, a deaf wadding,
The hands feeding it paper
And sensations of wood or metal
On its own terms. Trying to read
I persist a while, finish the recognition
By my breath of a dead giant's breath--
Stayed by the space of a rhythm,
Witnessing the blue gulf of the air.
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Book
08/1979
Princeton University Press
€20.50
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Robert Pinsky
An Explanation of America
Book
08/1979
Princeton University Press
€16.08
Article exhausted; check different version
Person
Robert Pinsky
Content
- Cover Page
- Half-title Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Lair
- An Explanation of America
- Part One: Its Many Fragments
- I. Prologue: You
- II. From the Surface
- III. Local Politics
- IV. Countries and Explanations
- Part Two: Its Great Emptiness
- I. A Love of Death
- II. Bad Dreams
- III. Horace, Epistulae I, xvi
- IV. Filling the Blank
- Part Three: Its Everlasting Possibility
- I. Braveries
- II. Serpent Knowledge
- III. Mysteries of the Future
- IV. Epilogue: Endings
- Memorial
