American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940) is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of which are collections of his poetry. His published work also includes critically acclaimed translations, Dante Alighieri's Inferno and The Separate Notebooks by Czesław Miłosz. He teaches at Boston University.

Contents

• 1 Biography
  • 1.1 Early life and education
  • 1.2 Personal life
  • 1.3 Career
• 2 Bibliography
• 3 Honors and awards
• 4 References
  • 4.1 Books and printed materials
  • 4.2 Online resources
• 5 External links
  • 5.1 Interviews
  • 5.2 Poetry readings
  • 5.3 Other

Biography

Early life and education

Pinsky was born in Long Branch, New Jersey to Jewish parents, Sylvia (née Eisenberg) and *ord Simon Pinsky, an optician. He attended Long Branch High School. He received a B.A. from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and earned both an M.A. and PhD from Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow in creative writing. He was a student of Francis Fergusson and Paul Fussell at Rutgers and Yvor Winters at Stanford.

Personal life

Pinsky married Ellen Jane Bailey, a clinical psychologist, in 1961. They have three children. Pinsky taught at Wellesley College and at the University of California at Berkeley, and now lives in Cambridge, M*achusetts and teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University.

Career

Early on, Pinsky was inspired by the flow and tension of jazz and the excitement that it made him feel. As a former saxophonist, he has said that being a musician was a profoundly influential experience that he has tried to reproduce in his poetry. The musicality of poetry was and is extremely important to his work. Additionally, Pinsky revealed in a 1999 interview with Bomb Magazine that he enjoys jazz for its "physical immediacy, improvisation and also the sense that a lifetime of suffering and study and thought and emotion is behind some single phrase."

Pinsky has acknowledged that his poetry would change somewhat depending on the particular subjectivity of each reader. Embracing the idea that people's individuality would fill out the poem, he has said, "The poetry I love is vocal, composed with the poet's voice and I believe its proper culmination is to be read with a reader's imagined or actual voice. The human voice in that sense is not electronically reproduced or amplified; it's the actual living breath inside a body—not necessarily an expert's body or the artist's body. Whoever reads the poem aloud becomes the proper medium for the poem." Pinsky observes 'the kind of poetry I write emphasizes the physical qualities of the words' for poetry to Pinsky, is a vocal art, not necessarily performative,but reading to one self or recalling some lines by memory. Pinsky comments 'all language is necessarily abstract ' . No aspect of a poem, he observes, is more singular, more unique, than its rhythm, for there are no rules.

Pinsky (right) with Gerald Stern at the Miami Book Fair International 2011

He received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 1974, and in 1997 he was named the United States Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress; he is the first and so far only poet to be named to three terms. As Poet Laureate, Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project, in which thousands of Americans of varying backgrounds, all ages, and from every state share their favorite poems. Pinsky believed that, contrary to stereotype, poetry has a strong presence in the American culture. The project sought to do*ent that presence, giving voice to the American audience for poetry.

The Shakespeare Theatre of Washington, D.C. commissioned Pinsky to write a free adaptation of Friederich Schiller's drama Wallenstein. The Shakespeare Theatre presented the play, starring Stephen Pickering in the *le role, directed by Michael Kahn, in 2013. Premiering on April 17 of that year, the play had a sold-out run, in repertory with Coriol*. Pinsky also wrote the libretto for Death and the Powers, an opera by composer Tod Machover. The opera received its world premiere in Monte Carlo in September 2010 and its U.S. premiere at Boston's Cutler Majestic Theater in March 2011. Pinsky is also the author of the interactive fiction game Mindwheel (1984) developed by Synapse Software and released by Broderbund.

Pinsky guest-starred in an episode of the animated sitcom The Simpsons TV show, "Little Girl in the Big Ten" (2002), and appeared on The Colbert Report in April, 2007, as the judge of a "Meta-Free-Phor-All" between Stephen Colbert and Sean Penn.

In 2011, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Selected Poems.

In 2012, Cir*stantial Productions released the CD, PoemJazz, by Robert Pinsky and Laurence Hobgood.

Bibliography

Main article: Robert Pinsky bibliography

Honors and awards

• Premio Capri (Italian) in 2009
• Manhae Foundation Prize (Korean) in 2006
• PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry in 2004
• Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1997–2000)
• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (1974)
• Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University
• Saxifrage Prize (1980) for An Explanation of America
• William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America
• Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism (1988) for Poetry and the World
• Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1996) for The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966–1996
• Amb*ador Book Award in Poetry of the English Speaking Union
• Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (1997) for The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966–1996
• Los Angeles Times Book Award (1994) for The Inferno of Dante
• Book-of-the-Month Editor's Choice (1994) for The Inferno of Dante
• Academy of American Poets' Translation Award (1994) for The Inferno of Dante

Pinsky has received honorary doctorates from numerous ins*utions such as Northwestern University (2000), Binghamton University (2001), the University of Michigan (2001), Lake Forest College (2007), Emerson College (2012), Southern New Hampshire University (2014) University of M*achusetts Dartmouth (2016), and Merrimack College (2016)

References

Books and printed materials

• The Art of Poetry LXXVI: Robert Pinsky" The Paris Review No. 144 (1997), pp.:180–213 (interview)
• Poetry in Review: "Robert Pinsky" The Yale Review Volume 105 No. 4 (2017), pp.:177–185

Online resources

• Library of Congress Online Resources
• "Modernism and Memory," Pinsky's lecture from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar
• "In a deepening room," ArchitectureBoston Magazine, Summer 2014: Books (Volume 18 n2)

External links

• Official Robert Pinsky Website
• The Favorite Poem Project (with videos)
• The Art of Poetry MOOC Videos
• Appearances on C-SPAN

Interviews

• The Favorite Poem Project site
• Concord Academy 2012 Commencement Address
• LA Times story on PEN Center Lifetime Achievement award
• Audio, Bruce Springsteen reads "Samurai Song"at Wamfest
• The PBS NewsHour 5/20/11 Interview
• Newark Star-Ledger Springsteen/Pinsky story
• Video, Colbert Report, Pinsky with Sean Penn and Colbert
• David Kaufman Review in Tablet
• Poet Robert Pinsky Takes on King David in a public radio interview on ThoughtCast!
• Robert Pinsky's interview about his time and inspirations in Maine
• Cortland Review Interview with Robert Pinsky
• "Robert Pinsky, The Art of Poetry No. 76". The Paris Review (Interview). No.:144. Interviewed by Ben Downing, Daniel Kunitz. Fall 1997.
• "The Life of David". Bookworm (Interview). Interviewed by Michael Silverblatt. KCRW. December 2005.

Poetry readings

• Pinsky read 'Shirt' aloud on YouTube
• Robert Pinsky reads his poem "Street Music".
• Interview with Robert Pinsky for Guernica Magazine
• Watch Robert Pinsky read "Book" at Open-Door Poetry
• IPA: Robert Pinsky reads a selection of his poetry
• Pinsky poetry readings

Other

• Essential Pleasures: Robert Pinsky's column on Poems Out Loud (April 2009)
• Boston University Press Release
• Modern American Poetry on Robert Pinsky
• The Academy of American Poets on Robert Pinsky