The Mind Has Cliffs of Fall: Poetry at the Extremes of Feeling

Fiction & Literature, Poetry, Anthologies
Cover of the book The Mind Has Cliffs of Fall: Poetry at the Extremes of Feeling by Robert Pinsky, W. W. Norton & Company
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Robert Pinsky ISBN: 9781324001799
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Publication: October 22, 2019
Imprint: W. W. Norton & Company Language: English
Author: Robert Pinsky
ISBN: 9781324001799
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publication: October 22, 2019
Imprint: W. W. Norton & Company
Language: English

A bold new anthology of poems that contend with the most extreme human emotions, from former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky.

Despair, mania, rage, guilt, derangement, fantasy: poetry is our most intimate, personal source for the urgency of these experiences. Poems get under our skin; they engage with the balm, and the sting, of understanding. In The Mind Has Cliffs of Fall—its title inspired by a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem—acclaimed poet Robert Pinsky gives us more than 130 poems that explore emotion at its most expansive, distinct, and profound.

With seven illuminating chapters and succinct headnotes for each poem, Pinsky leads us through the book’s sweeping historical range. Each chapter, with contents chronologically presented from Shakespeare to Terrance Hayes, Dante to Patricia Lockwood, shows the persistence and variation in our states of mind. “The Sleep of Reason” explores sanity and the imagination, moving from William Cowper’s “Lines Written During a Time of Insanity” to Nicole Sealey’s “a violence.” “Grief” includes Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs last in the Door-yard Bloom’d” and Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do,” and “Manic Laughter” highlights both Lewis Carroll and Martín Espada. Each poem reveals something new about the vastness of human emotion; taken together they offer a sweeping ode to the power of poetry.

Guided by “our finest living example of [the American civic poet]” (New York Times), The Mind Has Cliffs of Fall demonstrates how extreme feelings can be complementary and contradicting, and how poetry is not just an expression of emotion, but emotion itself.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

A bold new anthology of poems that contend with the most extreme human emotions, from former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky.

Despair, mania, rage, guilt, derangement, fantasy: poetry is our most intimate, personal source for the urgency of these experiences. Poems get under our skin; they engage with the balm, and the sting, of understanding. In The Mind Has Cliffs of Fall—its title inspired by a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem—acclaimed poet Robert Pinsky gives us more than 130 poems that explore emotion at its most expansive, distinct, and profound.

With seven illuminating chapters and succinct headnotes for each poem, Pinsky leads us through the book’s sweeping historical range. Each chapter, with contents chronologically presented from Shakespeare to Terrance Hayes, Dante to Patricia Lockwood, shows the persistence and variation in our states of mind. “The Sleep of Reason” explores sanity and the imagination, moving from William Cowper’s “Lines Written During a Time of Insanity” to Nicole Sealey’s “a violence.” “Grief” includes Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs last in the Door-yard Bloom’d” and Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do,” and “Manic Laughter” highlights both Lewis Carroll and Martín Espada. Each poem reveals something new about the vastness of human emotion; taken together they offer a sweeping ode to the power of poetry.

Guided by “our finest living example of [the American civic poet]” (New York Times), The Mind Has Cliffs of Fall demonstrates how extreme feelings can be complementary and contradicting, and how poetry is not just an expression of emotion, but emotion itself.

More books from W. W. Norton & Company

Cover of the book Easy Ego State Interventions: Strategies for Working With Parts by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book The City of Devi: A Novel by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book Body Sense: The Science and Practice of Embodied Self-Awareness (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book Beowulf (Bilingual Edition) by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (A New Verse Translation) by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book Eleanor: The Years Alone by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book Picnic Comma Lightning: The Experience of Reality in the Twenty-First Century by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book The Genius of George Washington by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book What Caused the Civil War?: Reflections on the South and Southern History by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book Anthill: A Novel by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Issues of Our Time) by Robert Pinsky
Cover of the book To Wake the Dead: A Renaissance Merchant and the Birth of Archaeology by Robert Pinsky
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy