The first U.S. Poet Laureate for three consecutive years (1997 to 2000), Pinsky accomplished more than just poetry. In 1984, for example, he authored an interactive narrative game called Mindwheel; today he is a poetry editor for the irreverent online magazine Slate. It is no surprise, then, that his poetry embraces modern life, while remaining firmly rooted in a traditional education in poetry and the classics. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In The Figured Wheel, for example, Pinsky's poetry ranges from a choked look to a discussion of psychiatrists. His style, though variable, is readable and avoids much of the "coding," or deliberately obscure language, of other poets. His poem "History of My Heart," for example, begins with One Christmastime Fats Waller in a fur coat Rolled beaming from a cab with two pretty girls each on each arm as he led them in heavy snow across Thirty-fourth Street to the crowd busy Shopping at Macy's: perfume, holly, snowflake displays. The chimes rang for change. In Toys, Where My Mother Worked (Pinsky, 1996, 123) Even in this short excerpt, Pinsky uses a series of poetic devices that deepen the poem, making it both complete and aware of modern life. For example, the unusual choice of the word "Rolled" immediately gives the reader a sense of the large man emerging exuberantly out of the snow, perhaps with a sense of urgency or inexorability. The capitalization of "Thirty-fourth Street," which is not necessary, gives you a sense of the importance of time and place. The use of a colon is unexpected in the line "Shopping at Macy's:" - and the colon alerts us that he is announcing what shopping at Macy's during the Christmas season was about. “Chimes ring for change” brings up the sound of cash registers ringing and coins clinking, but may have a different meaning. It may also conjure up the image of bell ringers ringing the changes (each different ringing pattern of the bells in a church is called a "change") in a cathedral. It is an interesting image and in keeping with the festive aura of Christmas with which Pinsky begins this poem. Pinky's style in this collection is generally free verse, with occasional internal rhyme. However, he does not write in a prose style. With the use of 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 that tries to sound like prose. The poem "Hymn to Meaning" (which is an example of his wide-ranging arguments - it is a philosophical question about symbols) shows how his poetry is not necessarily strictly measured or rhymed (line feet vary - 4, 3 , 3, 5, 5, 3), but still very musical and poetic. You too in laughter, warrior angel; Your helmet the zodiac, plumed like a rocket Your spear the beggar's finger pointed at the mouth Your heel planted on the serpent Wording Your face a vapor, the wreath of cigarette smoke crowning Bogart as he gasps through it (Strand and Boland , 253) Uses anaphora, like the Bible, to make the verses resonate together and make the large amount of information conveyed in this verse easier to digest and understand. His exploration of images and symbols continues to the end of the poem: Dire one, Desired one. Savior, condemned - Absence, or presence always in play: let those who have never starved in your scarcity despise you. If I dare to denigrate your harp of shadows, I taste absinthe and motor oil, I pour ashon my head. You are the wound. You 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 within the chest, shaped into meaningful sounds in the larynx and mouth. In this sense, poetry is as much a physical or bodily art as dance" (Summary, Pinsky, 1998). Pinsky believes that poetry should be experienced aurally. In this, he recalls 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 comes from a poetic and classical background. For example, his translation of Dante's Inferno is addressed in its entirety, in both English and Italian, but Pinsky resists. the original Italian convention of the third rhyme; as he explains, triple rhyme is extremely difficult in English. He rejects third rhyme, and instead translates the entire poem into a "like sounds" rhyme convention. solution and instead provides a more flexible definition of rhyme, or the type and degree of similar sound that constitutes rhyme. But on the other hand, I did not accept similar sounds as rhyme: the translation is based on a fairly systematic rhyme rule that defines rhyme as the same consonant sounds, however vowels may differ, at the ends of words. " He gives examples "tell/feel/good" and "sleep/stop/get up" (Pinsky, 1994, xix). In this, Robert Pinsky is innovating in a new type of rhyme, or at least referencing an old form (consonance - (Abrams 9) “repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the middle vowel”) and then limiting it to the final consonant this, is fulfilling what he said, commenting on the phrase of Landor poem “Yes can be an 'innovator,' ...reviving, adapting, and developing traditional forms, as much as through invention" (Schmidt 388-389). Pinsky did not invent an entirely new type of rhyme for his translation of the Hell, but he made it sound uniquely his own, and adapted it well to the English language, For example, he writes, My teaching; He who created all the characteristics of Heaven In His transcendent wisdom gave them guides So every part shines above all others, all the Illumination of distributed nature. Likewise, for the goods of worldly splendor He assigned a guide and a minister - she, when the time seems appropriate spreads (Pinsky, 1994, 57) The "similar sounds" of characteristics/nature, goods/spreads, plus the repetition of guides/guides gives the stanzas a sense of unity and musicality, without the "hard rhymes" that he explains in his Translator's Note (xix) that he so detests. This is a new innovation, and to modern ears it sounds more poetic and less colloquial than blank verse, but it also lacks the singsong that direct, hard rhymes have come to mean in our day and age. Enjambement, even through stanzas, is common in his Inferno and in his poetic works, such as "Story of my heart" (see above). It is curious, perhaps, that Pinsky chose such an extreme enjambment, which would seem to suggest a fragmentation of thought. In fact it is part of his innovation against the singsong and conventional conventionality of the old forms. This enjambment leaves Pinsky free to create his own similar rhymes, but does not limit his thoughts to the edge of his verse, whatever its length. “Absinthe and motor oil” – an old substance and a new – perhaps give some clue as to what Robert Pinsky's poem is about. His new poetry is accessible and engaging, without being overly simple or banal. His translations are dense, but poetic and light-hearted, even with)