The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996

Brings together four previous books of poetry--including Sadness and Happiness and History of My Heart--with such new works as ""Avenue,"" ""City Elegies,"" ""Ginza Samba,"" and ""Impossible to Tell.""

A collection of poems from one of America's most innovative poets, The Figured Wheel illustrates Pinsky's knack for recovering some of the pleasures of prose--storytelling, humor, the rich texture of a world filled with people and ideas--for poetry. In "The Night Game," he recalls himself as a child imagining a Jewish southpaw, "Even more gifted/ Than Whitey Ford" who refuses to pitch on Yom Kippur. In "The New Saddhus," he imagines a multicultural assortment of middle-aged men, "Kurd, Celt, Marxist, Rotarian," setting out on a mysterious pilgrimage. Pinsky's writing gets at the depths of human experience, in which everything is always repeating, but is also always new.