Ron Padgett is one of America's best-known and most acclaimed poets. Admired by John Ashbery, Jim Jarmusch, and Anne Waldman, his poems have moved and delighted generations of readers with their inventiveness, their gentle humor, and above all their ability to elicit wonder. These qualities are as evident as ever in Pink Dust, whose title refers to the residue from all the author's erasers, swept away or blown into the air. Like that dust, this is a book of memories rubbing up against the present. Its poignant reflections on old age shimmer with all the insouciance of youth.
"Reading Padgett one realizes that playfulness and lightness of touch are not at odds with seriousness.... As is often the case, leave it to the comic writer to best convey our tragic predicament." —Charles Simic
"[Padgett's] poetry is masterful for its panoramic humanity and mind-stopping verbal wit, its breathtaking power and beauty. We want to stay with the person in these poems all day long." —Anne Waldman
“Pink Dust is full of optimism and piercing humour…As always, Padgett's sombre subjects are leavened with his trademark aversion to sanctimony and pretension; or, what one poem defines as our contemporary culture's ‘small, sad pleasure / of being right’.” —Tim Keane, The Telegraph
Ron Padgett is a poet whose many honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters poetry award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement from the Poetry Society of America. In addition to his memoirs of Joe Brainard, Dick Gallup, and Ted Berrigan, he has published book-length translations of the poetry of Apollinaire, Reverdy, and Cendrars. Padgett lives in New York City.
Ron Padgett is one of America's best-known and most acclaimed poets. Admired by John Ashbery, Jim Jarmusch, and Anne Waldman, his poems have moved and delighted generations of readers with their inventiveness, their gentle humor, and above all their ability to elicit wonder. These qualities are as evident as ever in Pink Dust, whose title refers to the residue from all the author's erasers, swept away or blown into the air. Like that dust, this is a book of memories rubbing up against the present. Its poignant reflections on old age shimmer with all the insouciance of youth.
"Reading Padgett one realizes that playfulness and lightness of touch are not at odds with seriousness.... As is often the case, leave it to the comic writer to best convey our tragic predicament." —Charles Simic
"[Padgett's] poetry is masterful for its panoramic humanity and mind-stopping verbal wit, its breathtaking power and beauty. We want to stay with the person in these poems all day long." —Anne Waldman
“Pink Dust is full of optimism and piercing humour…As always, Padgett's sombre subjects are leavened with his trademark aversion to sanctimony and pretension; or, what one poem defines as our contemporary culture's ‘small, sad pleasure / of being right’.” —Tim Keane, The Telegraph
Author
Ron Padgett is a poet whose many honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters poetry award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement from the Poetry Society of America. In addition to his memoirs of Joe Brainard, Dick Gallup, and Ted Berrigan, he has published book-length translations of the poetry of Apollinaire, Reverdy, and Cendrars. Padgett lives in New York City.
