March 24, 2011
“ABC”
Go happily, irradiating joy,
Knowledge, love. Many
Need oblivion, painkillers,
Quickest respite.
Sweet time unafflicted,
Various world:
X=your zenith.
This poem is from Selected Poems by Robert Pinsky (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011) and is reprinted here with the author’s kind permission. Typography from Drop Cap by Jessica Hische.
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By Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 1974 and in 1975 published his collection of poems, Sadness and Happiness. He was United States Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1997 to 2000. He now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University.
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