#andromaque

Milestone Monday: Robert Pinsky’s Birthday!

Today we celebrate the poet Robert Pinsky, who was born in Long Branch, New Jersey on October 20th, 1940. Pinsky has served as U.S. Poet Laureate three times, and has taught in the graduate writing program at Boston University since 1989.

The images are taken from two fine press editions of Pinsky’s work. The first, ABC, a brief and subtle abecedarian poem, was designed and printed in a limited edition of ten by Caryl Seidenberg of the Vixen Press in Winnetka, IL in 2003. Also by Seidenberg and Vixen Press is 1998’s The Rhyme of Reb Nachman, printed in an edition of 125. In her colophon to the latter text, Seidenberg explains that the book is “set in 16 point Eusebius, lightly spiced with Andromaque,” with Arches Cover paper, and handmade Nepalese Lokta endpapers. The Campbell-Logan Bindery bound the edition.

In an author’s note, Pinsky divulges that he invented Reb Nachman in order to impress two fellow poets, Gail Mazur and Lloyd Schwartz, and suggests that the poem is therefore, “is a kind of translation with no original.”

See other beautiful artist books of Robert Pinsky’s poetry.

Hear Robert Pinsky describe his process.

Watch Caryl Seidenberg discuss printing.

See more Milestone Monday posts!

--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

Round 1

Arcadia :

I literally cannot put this play into words. entropy as a literal force. 2 time periods sharing a stage and intertwining until they literally complete each other's conversations and chaos claims it all.

THOMASINA: Oh, Septimus! -- can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides -- thousands of poems -- Aristotle's own library!....How can we sleep for grief?

SEPTIMUS: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

Andromaque :

Orestes (Agamemnon's son) in in love with Hermione (Helen and Menelas' daughter, his cousin) who's in love with Pyrrhus (Achille's son) who's in love with Andromaque (Pyrrhus' captive) who's in love with her dead husband (Hector)

Pyrrhus threatens the life of Andromaque's son to convince her to marry him. Hermione couldn't care less about Orestes