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Article: The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996.
- Article from:
- Chicago Review
- Article date:
- March 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 University of Chicago. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The publication of a "new and collected" edition of poems by a major writer is clearly an occasion for retrospective appraisal; unlike a volume of entirely new writing, such an edition invites readers to reflect on the poet's accumulating body of work and to consider his or her new poems in the light of prior achievements. Indeed, the "new and collected" may be said to insist on such an evaluation, in that it compels readers, in effect, to reacquire books they already own as the price for seeing the new poems.
In Robert Pinsky's case, however, retrospection might seem a bit ridiculous: he has not written many poems likely to be entirely forgotten. Indeed, Pinsky's ...