SOURCE: "Melancholy Pastorals: George Parker and Robert Pinsky," The Metamorphoses of Metaphor: Essays in Poetry and Fiction, Elisabeth Sifton Books, 1987, pp. 107-20.

In the following excerpt, Corn deems Pinsky's poetry "accurate, truthful, conscientious" and compares his work to that of Walt Whitman.

We can doubt that the book [An Explanation of America] does … in fact, explain America, but not that it defends the humane values of reason and communitarianism. It is not Pinsky's first such defense. Critic and poet, he is the author, first, of Lander's Poetry (1968), a book remarkable for the sensitivity, discrimination, and enthusiasm of its readings. It is also sometimes rash, as when Pinsky compares Landor's "To My Child Carlino" to Wordsworth's "Intimations" ode, with all the disadvantage on the side of Wordsworth. The same kind of rashness runs through The Situation of Poetry (1975), Pinsky's survey of recent American poetry, with special reference to "Ode...