Review by Booklist Review
Former U.S. poet laureate Pinsky has created a most sophisticated break-up mixtape in this anthology, satisfying a craving for both strong emotion and literary substance. The book is divided into six sections, ""The Sleep of Reason,"" ""Grief,"" ""Love and Rage,"" ""Despair,"" ""Guilt, Shame, Blame,"" and ""Manic Laughter,"" and spans the history of poetry from the ancients to the present. Each poem has an introduction consisting of at most a couple of sentences ""in a spirit more of invitation than explanation,"" Pinsky says. The poems include the expected (the Hopkins poem that supplies the anthology's title, Hayden's ""Those Winter Sundays,"" lots of Dickinson) and some less frequently seen in general-interest anthologies. The Elizabethan Fulke Greville appears in all but one section. The book expands beyond interpersonal loss to include poems focused on war and the environment, certainly a contemporary ""cliffs of fall."" As Pinsky's introduction explains, ""the extremes of emotion are themselves capacious, various, and inclusive,"" and the poems chosen allow the reader to find and indulge whichever flavor of exquisite agony the moment requires.--Barbara Egel Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
