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.