Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems

This text gathers together all Robert Pinsky's poetry, including 21 new poems. The verse essay An Explanation of America (Carcarnet, 1980) remains at the heart of this work. The book also includes Ginza Samba, a history of the saxophone, and Impossible to Tell, a jazz-like poem that combines elegy with the Japanese custom of linking-poems and the American tradition of ethnic jokes. Sadness and Happiness (1975), History of My Heart (1984) and The Want Bone (1990).