Letter

With Robert pinsky at the Summit

With Robert pinsky at the Summit

Dear Team:

I just recieved today my autographed copy of POEMS TO READ: A new favorite poem project anthology edited by Robert Pinsky. My commentary on Gerard Manley Hopkins' " Spring and Fall " was published from only 200 commentaries on favorite poems chosen from 25,000 entries. I submitted my commentary in 1998. Now I have made it to the top. Robert Pinsky was hailed as America's poet laureate for three years by an act of congress in Washington D.C.

Michael

Here is the poem:

Spring and Fall

Margaret are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost gussed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Here is my commentary:

It was a strange flash, I was reciting this poem for the umpteenth time when all of a sudden I saw the scenery of my childhood: the old road on the way to the shopping center; my father driving me past a winery, the autumn trees shedding their leaves, the whole thing feeling so alien and remote, yet also very intimate. It was all so long ago. My mother was sick then. She is dead now, and so is my father.

Michael Finberg, 40, writer, Oakland California.