The New Criterion

In his December “Verse Chronicle,” William Logan writes of Robert Pinsky that in his new book (Gulf Music) he can be “a bit wild,” but that “his rashness is the soul of caution.” Odd, though, that the very brief samples of palpable wildness Logan quotes are not at all cautious—not, surely, if by cautious one means predictable or unlikely to challenge a reader’s comprehension. Perhaps Logan intends, with “soul of caution,” to suggest that, even where the poet juxtaposes or alludes with apparent abandon or recklessness, he allows his reader to discern an informing logic and thus to see that Pinsky really is up to something complicated, rich and plausible. And as that indeed is what is characteristically on offer in Pinsky’s 2007 volume Gulf Music, it is not easy to understand Logan’s objection. For a poet to insist that the wildness in a poem be controlled by an informing idea is not to be unduly cautious or timid.

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