"The Figured Wheel" fully collects the first four books of poetry, as well as twenty-one new poems, by Robert Pinsky, the former U.S. Poet Laureate.
Critic Hugh Kenner, writing about Pinsky's first volume, described this poet's work as "nothing less than the recovery for language of a whole domain of mute and familiar experience." Both the transformation of the familiar and the uttering of what has been hitherto mute or implicit in our culture continue to be central to Pinsky's art. New poems like "Avenue" and "The City Elegies" envision the urban landscape's mysterious epitome of human pain and imagination, forces that recur in "Ginza Samba," an astonishing history of the saxophone, and "Impossible to Tell," a jazz-like work that intertwines elegy with both the Japanese custom of linking-poems and the American tradition of ethnic jokes. A final section of translations includes Pinsky's renderings of poems by Czeslaw Milosz, Paul Celan, and others, as well as the last canto of his award-winning version of the "Inferno,"

Cathartic, refreshing new work by the American favorite

Tiptoe on the globe. Gazing
nowhere in particular, the slender
Thunderer surrounded by thunder,

Fire zigzag in his grasp, labeled "Spirit
Of Communication"---unhistorical,
Pure, the merciless messenger.

--from "A Phonebook Cover Hermes of the Nineteen-forties"

Innovative, engaging poems from a leading American poet.

Stone wheel that sharpens the blade that mows the grain,Wheel of the sunflower turning, wheel that turnsThe spiral press that squeezes the oil expressedFrom shale or olives. Particles that turn mudOn the potter's wheel that spins to form the vesselThat holds the oil that drips to cool the blade.--from "Biography"Jersey Rain takes up a central American subject: the emotional power of inventions, devices, and homemade imaginings -- from the alphabet and the lyre through the steel drum and piano to the record player, digital computer, and television. Formally innovative and highly readable poems like "ABC," "Ode to Meaning," "To Television," and "The Green Piano" meditate a life guided by the quick, artful tinkerer-god Hermes: deity of music and deception, escort of the dead, inventor of instruments, brilliant messenger, and trickster of heaven.

Tiptoe on the globe.
Gazing
nowhere in particular, the slender
Thunderer surrounded by thunder,

Fire zigzag in his grasp, labeled "Spirit
Of Communication"---unhistorical,
Pure, the merciless messenger.

--from "A Phonebook Cover Hermes of the Nineteen-forties"

Jersey Rain -- at once complex and aboveboard -- marks a new, strong, lyrical stage of Robert Pinsky's work. Assembled here are poems -- some of the finest of his career -- that together compose a sweeping and embattled meditation on the themes of a life guided by Hermes: deity of music and deception, escort of the dead, inventor of instruments, brilliant messenger and trickster of heaven.

There have been many exciting advances in our understanding of mammalian sex determination and differentiation in the last decade. Using these advances to elucidate clinical conditions of abnormal sexual development, the authors bring together great expertise in molecular endocrinology, molecular genetics, and dysmorphology. The text begins with a discussion of normal gonadal and sexual development that presents enough embryology, biochemistry, and endocrinology to make the remaining chapters easy to assimilate. Then the authors discuss overarching clinical issues that are common to genetic abnormalities of gonadal and sexual development, providing a detailed account of genetic causes of gonadal maldevelopment, followed by a compendium of the singular, syndromal, endocrinologic, and systemic-metabolic genetic causes of sexual maldevelopment. The final section describes genetic forms of gamete failure.
Seldom dogmatic, this unconventional textbook frequently presents alternatives, highlights speculation, raises questions, and attempts to provide answers. Yet it will be a uniquely valuable reference on an area of genetic medicine where much has happened in recent years. This book will be welcomed by medical geneticists, genetic counselors, endocrinologists, gynecologists, urologists, and students who need fully-referenced information about the genetic aspects of humans sexual maldevelopment in order to better manage their patients and their patients families.