Robert Pinsky
by Sneha Madhavan-Reese
Passengers going to Hoboken, change trains
at Summit. Even in his crib, he considered
the rhythm of speech; as a boy, he studied
the drumming of sound. He would fiddle
with the saxophone for a time but later
find melodies in syntax. Passengers going
to Hoboken, change trains at Summit...
On stage in Ottawa, Pinsky’s no longer
larger than life. He presses his palms together
before and after he speaks. He stretches his arms
to show the length of lines, holds up fingers
to count syllables. His memory amazes me.
I turn words inside out, he says, and
I believe him. I even watch him do it.
He turns the library’s herringbone floor
into a poem about Cajun migration.
Truth is, I never liked his poetry much.
But I enjoy the man. He doesn’t lecture.
He makes the afternoon light with stories.
I laugh to learn of his boyhood reverie,
hearing the conductor’s drone, Passengers going
to Hoboken, change trains at Summit—his hand
moves up and down as he speaks—so rapt he’d forget
where he was going, forget to get off the train.
Sneha Madhavan-Reese was born in Detroit and now lives in Ottawa. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals across Canada, including Arc, Descant, The New Quarterly, and The Antigonish Review. The winner of Arc’s 2015 Diana Brebner Prize, she was also a finalist for The Malahat Review’s 2014 Far Horizons Award and a finalist for the 2013 Alfred G. Bailey Prize. Her debut poetry collection, Observing the Moon, is forthcoming from Hagios Press.