First hearing him read some thirteen years ago, at a youth conference in Wyoming, the thing about Robert Pinsky's poetry that shook me up was the way he spoke. He enunciated like no one I'd ever heard. He hit each syllable not only clearly but with dynamics. The syllables took the manner of punctuation, propelling you forward or sitting you still.

How they combined into words and phrases, construction in pursuit of meaning, put what I understood about poetry to that point in a fresh light. Line breaks, rhyme, meter, onomatopoeia, symbols, styles, they were simply supports. What mattered was what you wanted to say.

Of course, I needed more years to realize what had grabbed me. But I was grateful when I slowly caught on and glad this week when Pinsky came and read at the Folger. Salzburg pal Jess and I caught him there Tuesday. (Photo above was hers. We also ate Good Stuff burgers and discussed her new roommate, Abe Lincoln.) Pinsky read for an hour or so and then took questions. He talked with excitement about decades of collaborations with musicians and technologists. He enunciated with drive, even reading the poem I'd heard him read thirteen years ago.

What he said at his Yale reading later this week: "A poem is a work of art made out of the sounds of a language. It is not a song. It is sounds of speech approaching the conditions of a song." He spoke similarly on writing at an event with Springsteen a couple years ago. "For me, it’s an awful lot like noodling at the piano, playing with colors, except it’s syllables. I write with my voice. My voice box is my writing instrument."

At the Folger, he read another one I was hoping we'd hear, one just called "Book." Part captured a more recent hope and fear of mine:

Enchanted wood. Glyphs and characters between boards.
The reader’s dread of finishing a book, that loss of a world,

And also the reader’s dread of beginning a book, becoming
Hostage to a new world, to some spirit or spirits unknown.

1. The fact this crazy ad for roses exists, runs in our paper and causes two people to have a debate like this one. Link. (I vote neighbor.)

2. 2010's Valentines for Journalists. 2009's Valentines for Journalists. (My favorite: "I love you like a reporter loves cake." I love you, cake.)

3. The startling end of Robert Pinsky's "crazy love" poetry round-up.

"Her Triumph"
William Butler Yeats

I did the dragon's will until you came
Because I had fancied love a casual
Improvisation, or a settled game
That followed if I let the kerchief fall:
Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings
And heavenly music if they gave it wit;
And then you stood among the dragon"‘rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;
And now we stare astonished at the sea,
And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.

*Have yet to decide whether to admit its existence this year or not.

Dancing Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky offers a mini-compilation of love poetry to Slate for Valentine's Day. My favorite is halfway down the page, the Sappho by way of William Carlos Williams.

Related past entries:
-March 10, 2004: Pinsky and my chainsaw
-Oct. 19, 2003: Pinsky on baseball
-March 16, 2003: Pinsky on war
-Nov. 30, 2002: Pinsky on 9/11

I came across Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project today.

As a fan of the former poet laureate and not-too-shabby dancer, I dug through the site and a few favorites I hadn't thought of recently, like Dulce et Decorum Est and We Real Cool.

I also came across a poem that for years has held special meaning for me: Robert Frost's 'Out, out–'. The poem offered amazing accompaniment for the Kenneth Cole ad I saw in the front of the New Yorker last night.

For those who know my chainsaw story, the ad is a must-see. I've torn the page out of the magazine and will save it forever. All I've got say is: Mr. Cole, believe it.

View the ad.

Robert Pinsky goes Keats on us this week:

Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too�

While the former poet laureate didn't mention baseball in his comments, we know the playoffs had to be on his mind. Once a Brooklyn fan, now a Red Sox fan, Pinsky's a wait-'til-next-year kind of guy. You think he wasn't rooting for a Cubs-Red Sox series?

In the year the long ball finally quieted down, he had to be loving this postseason. He's a pitcher's poet. His Night Game has got to be one of the best pitching duel poems ever, if anyone else ever wrote one. If no ever did, then the poem still throws the lights out.

Pinsky doesn't write like a man who sits around reading Bill James. Across the waves of a radio Brooklynite's Dodger dial, he would probably agree with Vin Scully: "Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination."

Poets are all about illumination.

This postseason, when statistics are giving way to game sixes and sevens and goats and ghosts, Pinsky introduces Keats' work with nameless appropriation. "The fulfillment, the hovering, and the finality of autumn," writes the baseball fan, illuminated but long-suffering.

Speaking of Jesuits, a recent Luckytown Digest had a good post about a Springsteen-fan Jesuit at Fordham University. Scroll down to the "bruce in church" e-mail to read it. There were a few interesting, 9/11-related follow-ups in the subsequent digest as well.

Speaking of September 11, some for-a-time-lost bookmarks deserve mention. First, way back in early September this year, former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky wrote a thoughtful piece for Slate about poetry and the terror attacks. The article doesn't rush to judgment, but instead arrives there after travelling through a few poems. I give Pinsky a lot of respect because he seems to understand the world both as a poet and as an average, verse-disinclined human being. Plus, I saw him dance once. (He could groove.)

For a far less poetic but more immediate look at reaction to the attacks, read this archive from Fark.com. The site's content is varied almost to the point of indescription; its community and moderators post links throughout each day to interesting news articles and Web pages. (Note to the easily offended: Some aren't appropriate but most are.)

Fark also has a comments area for each link, and that's where the archive is most amazing. Scroll through the comments, starting with the earliest one. You can almost see the streams of information passing by and tightening into history.