[An Explanation of America] is not quite so presumptuous as it sounds. If an explanation of America is to be had from it at all, it's not one that can be quickly grasped. This is just as well: when Pinsky does allow himself some fairly explicit analysis of contemporary America—on Vietnam: 'I think it made our country older, forever'—he can sound bland and complacent. For the most part, though, the poem is about the difficulty of explaining America: knowing that the notions of 'country' and 'place' are problematic ones …, Pinsky instead turns his attention on 'a place where you and I have never been / And need to imagine', using dreams, images and historical comparisons as a way towards reaching provisional and personal conclusions about what America means. Long ambitious poems of this order often dissolve into fragments, but Pinsky's is held together firstly by the presence...