Proverbs of Limbo: Poems

A new book of poems by the three-time poet laureate Robert Pinsky, a writer "rarely equalled" (Louise Glück).

Proverbs of Limbo, Robert Pinsky’s first new book of poetry in eight years, takes an original approach to the fraught, central matter of borders.

In this collection, the poet mines limbal regions, those spaces between differences that can be at once generative and oppressive, enlightening and dark, exciting and fatal. For Pinsky, they include the familiar borders between demographic categories, as well as more personal borderlands, such as the fringes between family history and world history or personality and culture: a lifetime’s territories of inbetween.

The title Proverbs of Limbo tips its hat, at an angle, to the great poet William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell. Blake’s jagged, contrary proverbs resist, from within, the binary rights and wrongs of conventional Christianity: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”; “The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”

Here, Pinsky embodies a different resistance to different conventions of understanding. “The Buddha,” begins the title poem, “is a liquor store / On a busy corner.”

About the Author

Robert Pinsky's books of poetry include At the Foundling Hospital, Gulf Music, Jersey Rain, The Want Bone, and The Figured Wheel (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). His bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante set a modern standard. He was the poet laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2000. Among his awards and honors are the William Carlos Williams Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, the Manhae Prize, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the PEN American Center. He teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Boston University.