In the following essay excerpt, Molesworth explores how "Song of Reasons" is like a "nursery rhyme we sing a child to sleep by, covering up the narrative or logical holes with false totality and sweet song."

In his third and latest book of poetry, History of My Heart, Pinsky leaves the epistolary style and epic subject of An Explanation of America to return to the scale of the intimate lyric. In doing so he gives vent to an attitude that is in part confessional, but he never relinquishes the moral and public tones of the previous book. This mix of private and public stands apart from the work of most contemporary poets, and does so in part by reversing certain obvious and hidden features of American poetry. First, Pinsky willingly makes clear his wanting to connect the large patterns of fate with his homebound destinies. There are...