Robert Pinsky and Pat Alger
at UT
Everbody who breathes has his favorite poems, and Robert Pinsky has made it his goal to collect them. For some, these poems may be the whispered words of a prayer or the first sentences between lovers. For many others, though, the best stirrings of verse are played on the radio. With this in mind, the poet laureate has turned his attention to exploring the links between the composition of narrative country music and the crystalline vision of poetry. The idea may be strange at first glance, but when Pinsky joins his sonorous voice to the gentle twang of a guitar, the two arts become at once haunting and strangely familiar.
What Pinsky seems to discover is that country music shares with poetry a humble sense of self-measurement against a universe filled with cold stars and the debris of living. Few people in Nashville embody this careful introspection better than Pinsky’s performance partner, Pat Alger. The writer behind the broad-backed posture of singers like Garth Brooks, Alger brings an endearing nostalgia to much of his work and to the stage he shares with Pinsky. He remembers taking his girlfriend to the same cheesy Elvis movie three times or more and knowing that not even the King wanted to be there.
For his part, Pinsky filled the performance with rich passages from his poems and those of other poets, including a reading of Czeslaw Milosz’s “Song on Porcelain” that brought audience members to tears. The magic of his own work is that he is able to present the force and the pathos of history — both personal and common — in an overwhelmingly visceral voice. Apropos for someone born in New Jersey, the image of the ocean figures into some of Pinsky’s best poems, and its lapping and whispers soak every line. The voice of his work convinces the reader — or listener — to give up his marrow for the salt of this sea. It is a sea full of memories and loves, after all, in which even history becomes strangely erotic.
During the performance, Pinsky urged audience members to fill out cards naming their favorite poems and their reasons for loving them. As his collection of cards grows bigger, the poet will help organize “favorite poem” readings across the country. It’s amazing to think of the responses he must get as he travels the country — the warm lines of Yehuda Amichai from young lovers, perhaps, or some Anne Sexton from women learning the unnerving power of words. With the recurring gasps and applause from the audience, though, it is likely that Pinsky will flip through his collection and find himself over and over again.
— David Garza
This article appears in November 6 • 1998 and November 6 • 1998 (Cover).