Robert Pinsky

Pinsky’s life: Robert Pinsky was born in 1940 in Long Branch, New Jersey & began his performance career as a musician -- a saxophone player. He studied English literature at Rutgers University & earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow. He taught at the University of Chicago, Wellesley College & the University of California at Berkeley, and is now a professor of English at Boston University. He served an unprecedented three terms as U.S. Poet Laureate & is poetry editor for Slate.

Pinsky as poet: Pinsky’s poems have often had an aspect of public commentary, evident in the title of his book-length poem, An Explanation of America (1980), and his work often weaves links between individual lives & the larger currents of history & popular culture, as in his most famous poem, “Shirt,” which connects the threads of the created object with all the people involved in its making & brings to the surface of its fabric a detailed reimagining of the infamous Triangle Shirt Factory fire in 1911.

Pinsky as critic: Pinsky published lit crit essays (Landor’s Poetry, 1968) before his first collection of poems (Sadness and Happiness, 1975), and throughout his career has produced works of criticism & cultural analysis: The Situation of Poetry (1977), Poetry and the World (1988), The Sounds of Poetry (1998), Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry (2005).

Pinsky as translator: Pinsky has worked on translations from both Renaissance Italian & Polish into English. With Renata Gorczynski and Robert Hass, he was co-translator of The Separate Notebooks, poems by Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz in 1986. His verse translation of The Inferno of Dante was rightly applauded & admired when it was published in 1996.

The Favorite Poem Project: Pinsky’s focus during his tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate was The Favorite Poem Project, “dedicated to celebrating, documenting and promoting poetry’s role in Americans’ lives” by gathering readings of ordinary Americans’ most beloved poems & putting them out into the world in books, videos & community readings. The Favorite Poem Project has resulted in the publication of three anthologies, a series of videos, lesson plans & other materials for teachers, and a guide for local reading organizers.