Urgent Poetry

Former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky was recently interviewed on the BBC/NPR program The World about the University of Iowa's book Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak (to be published August 15). He was asked, to be blunt, is the poetry in this book any good?

I won't tell you his answer. You'll have to listen to the interview. And when you do, it's worth paying attention to Pinsky's very nuanced ideas of what constitutes poetry. There's also a further discussion of that question on the Encyclopaedia Britannica's blog.