How Does Robert Pinsky Pen A Protest Poem?
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Talya Zax August 8, 2017
Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s poem “Exile and Lightning” made an impact when he read it at a PEN America Writers Resist event in January. In front of a crowd that included cultural figures like Masha Gessen, Art Spiegelman, and Amy Goodman, Pinsky issued a striking reflection on the contemporary urgency of historic thought.
“Now, fellow-descendants, we endure a/Moment of charismatic indecency/And sanctimonious greed. Falsehood/Beyond shame. Our Polish Grandfather/Milosz and African American Grandmother Brooks/Endured worse than this./Fight first, then fiddle she wrote,” he declared in the second stanza.
Former United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. Image by Wikimedia Commons
Now, thanks to The New York Times Book Review, you can see how Pinsky refined the poem.
In a feature exploring the poem-writing process of six poets, Pinsky shared the 8th of what he said were 25 “numbered drafts” of the poem. It’s a typed manuscript, scrawled upon in blue and black pen.
“The poem became a bit shorter, more direct, I hope swifter,” he commented, reviewing the draft. “With this version, I got the title (it’s circled). The sketch of a floor lamp reflects my habit: crude little drawings of stuff around me where I’m writing. Sometimes of the pen.”
On the page, that second stanza carries similar themes and references to those it would include in the final poem, but its phrasing is markedly different. “A charismatic indecency rules./But our Grandfather Milosz and our/Grandmother Brooks and the others — /They saw worse than this./Fight first, then fiddle she wrote,/Regarding the Nazis and Jim Crow.”
For that Stanza, Pinsky’s edits are mild: Take out the “A” at the start of the stanza, and replace “wrote” with “says.” Minor changes, they heralded great ones to come. Pinsky underlined the phrase “charismatic indecency,” too. He knew he was on to something good.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
