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, including The Inferno of Dante Alighieri and The Separate Notebooks by Czesław Miłosz. He teaches at Boston University.

Biography

Early life and education

Pinsky was born in Long Branch, New Jersey to Jewish parents, Sylvia (née Eisenberg) and Milford 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 Ph.D. 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, Massachusetts 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.”

Rather than intending to communicate a single or concrete meaning with his work, Pinsky anticipated that his poetry would change 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 written with someone’s voice and I believe its proper culmination is to be read with someone’s voice. And the human voice in that sense is not electronically reproduced or amplified; it’s the actual living breath inside a body—not necessarily the second life of reception—not necessarily the 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.

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, being 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 document 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 title role, directed by Michael Kahn, in 2013. Premiering on April 17 of that year, the play had a sold-out run, in repertory with Coriolanus. 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, Circumstantial Productions released the CD, PoemJazz, by Robert Pinsky and Laurence Hobgood.

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections

Pinsky, Robert (1975). Sadness and happiness. Princeton UP.
An Explanation of America (1981) Princeton University Press
History of My Heart (1984) Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Want Bone (1990) Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966–1996 (1996) Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Jersey Rain (2000) Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Gulf Music: Poems (2007) Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Selected Poems (2011) Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Poems

Prose

Landor’s Poetry (1968) University of Chicago Press
The Situation of Poetry (1977) Princeton University Press
Poetry and the World (1988) Ecco Press
The Sounds of Poetry (1998) Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Democracy, Culture, and the Voice of Poetry (2002) Princeton University Press
The Life of David (2006) Schocken Books
Thousands of Broadways: Dreams and Nightmares of the American Small Town (2009) University of Chicago Press

Libretto

Death and the Powers, an opera by Tod Machover (2010)

Interactive fiction

Mindwheel (1984)

As translator

The Separate Notebooks by Czesław Miłosz, with Renata Gorczynski and Robert Hass (1984)
The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation (1995)

As editor

Handbook of Heartbreak (1998)
Americans’ Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Anthology, with Maggie Dietz (1999)
Poems to Read: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology (2002)
An Invitation to Poetry: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology (2004)
Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud (2009)
Singing School: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters (2014)

CDs

PoemJazz (2012) Circumstantial Productions

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
Ambassador 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

Notes and references

Notes and citations

Books and printed materials

The Art of Poetry LXXVI: Robert Pinsky" The Paris Review No. 144 (1997), pp. 180–213 (interview)

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)

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 (144). Interview with Ben Downing, Daniel Kunitz. Fall 1997.
The Life of David. Interview with Michael Silverblatt. December 2005. 'Bookworm’. 'KCRW’.

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

References

Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pinsky