Hoagland on Pinsky

I picked up Hoagland's Real Sofistikashun; I don't know why I ever put it down.  In Chapter 3 Hoagland gives Pinsky, Hass, Gluck as examples of how poets (great poets) develop over time.  He writes "the loss of innocence is inevitable, but one that has its compensations: skill, perspective and choice."

Pinsky develops from "explicator to gnostic namer ... one who ushers us toward Mystery."  Pinsky wants to render the kaleidoscope of experience, "to praise it, to invoke it and to provoke us to wonder."  He doesn't "strive toward intimacy with the reader."  The poem is a "dramatic performance" that offers "spectacle and sensation."

In an age that mistrusts language as never before, in which many poets take the inadequacy of speech as a central preoccupation, Pinsky is a rarity, the contemporary poet who has found language adequate, fruitful, and enlivening.

In "Ode to Meaning" Pinsky declares "You are the wound. You | be the medicine."

For my memoir I need to keep these words close: offer spectacle, be the namer, render sensation, provoke wonder and challenge Meaning to be the medicine.