Saturday, April 4, 2026

Robert Pinsky: ‘Outdated Information’ – The Atlantic

Illustration in the style of a yearbook-photo page with a grid of bluish squares, each with a sketched outline of a different person.

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Discover the June 2025 Difficulty

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I’m extra at residence in The Previous, need although I could
To dwell on this lonesome place The Current Second.

I share a stack of magazines with somebody
Who reads the brand new ones from the highest. The underside,

Salted with gilded ephemera, outspent adverts
And failing or pale fads, is simply my meat.

Praying that I don’t blind myself to horrors
I examine the Instances on-line to behold the face

Of fascism and its disregarding hand.
I carry on excited about it as I retreat

To scan a house display of my highschool class,
Our posted shades of mortal veils and marrows.

The dialog floats down tunnels of fortune
To the ninth grade, Joe Cittadino expelled

For setting a fireplace within the Chattle Constructing attic.
Joe died some time in the past, did folks comprehend it?

As a substitute of hiding as at all times earlier than in silent
Anonymity, I permit myself the homely

Civic pleasure of getting one thing to say,
Posting: Joe advised me again then it wasn’t him,

He took the blame to impress a lady, her brother
Was Frankie Quinn who actually set the hearth.

And thanks, Junior Genovese, for writing:
You’re proper Robert, it was Frankie Quinn.


This poem seems within the June 2025 print version.

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