It may be, as William Carlos Williams observed, that "the pure products of America go crazy." But Robert Pinsky in his ambitious and immensely likable long poem, "An Explanation of America," sets out to counter that impression by imagining a being capable of living sanely among American dreams of speed and space…. The tone of the poem, blank verse throughout, is inquiring and grave, though what one remembers are the opportunities it gives the father to play through a repertory of American fantasies from "Deep Throat" through dreams of plenty or solitude…. Mr. Pinsky's is a salutary tightrope act. Teaching his child to live among the detritus and accidental grandeurs of American life, he is himself at times seduced by the betrayed lyric visions behind the chaos….

Mr. Pinsky's boldest stroke is to place among his exhibits his own fine translation of the whole of Horace's famous epistle...