Page 2 of 2 <

Poet's Choice

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

odd, this part (my nursing school

embryology), this cleft in the world

that has to happen and has to heal. At first

the first division, then the flood of them, then

the migratory plates that make a palate when

they meet (and meeting, divide

the chambers, food

from air). The suture through which (the upper

lip) we face the world. It falls

a little short sometimes, as courage does.

Bolivia once, in May (I'd volunteer

on my vacations), and the boy was nine.

I know the world has harsher

things, there wasn't a war, there wasn't

malice, I know, but this one

broke me down. They brought him in

with a bag on his head. It was

burlap, I think, or sisal. Jute.

They hadn't so much as cut eyeholes.

Without the thinking about clefts and divisions, the vocabulary of "burlap," "sisal" and "jute," the self-critical reflection on "harsher things," the poem would be merely anecdotal or even voyeuristic. It is the mind holding various things together, or bringing them together, that generates the emotion. Significant subjects are demanding -- urgently difficult. Thought is the suture that keeps the world in mind.

Robert Pinsky was Poet Laureate of the United States

from 1997 through 2000.

< 2

Find More Reviews and Features in Books

A pandemic waiting in the wings

Alan Sipress's superb and sobering "The Fatal Strain" details the shadowy progression of a virulent avian flu now moving across Asia.

Who do men say that I am?

Though too cursory to work as an intro to the Gospels, Mary Gordon's "Reading Jesus" should appeal to anyone who wants to wrestle with the problems and paradoxes of the New Testament.