Robert Pinsky
Professor of English and Creative Writing at Boston University
Schools
- Boston University
Links
Biography
Boston University
Robert Pinsky is a professor of English and Creative Writing and currently serves as poetry editor for the online magazine Slate. In the fall of 2014, Pinsky will teach a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) titled “The Art of Poetry” on the edX platform.
Pinsky’s most recent collection of poems is his Selected Works (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2011). His collection Gulf Music won the Theodore Roethke Prize in 2008. Jersey Rain was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2000. The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and received both the Lenore Marshall Award and the Ambassador Book Award of the English Speaking Union. His other awards include the Shelley Memorial Award, the William Carlos Williams Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award, as well as the Howard Morton Landon Translation Prize for his best-selling translation of The Inferno of Dante (1994). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
During Pinsky’s tenure as Poet Laureate of the United States, from 1997-2000, he created the Favorite Poem Project to document, promote, and celebrate poetry’s place in American culture. In addition to the anthologies, the project has produced 50 short documentaries showcasing Americans reading and speaking about poems they love. The project website, www.favoritepoem.org, features these videos, as well as a forum for teachers and students, including lesson plans developed at the Summer Poetry Institutes hosted at Boston University in 2001-2003.
Pinsky is co-editor of Americans’ Favorite Poems and Poems to Read, and An Invitation to Poetry, all of which grew out of his work with the Favorite Poem Project. A fourth anthology, Essential Pleasures: Poems to Read Aloud, was released in the Spring of 2009.
Among his prose works are The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide (1998), Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry (2002), Life of David (2006), and most recently Thousands of Broadways: Dreams and Nightmares of the American Small Town (2009).
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Cases
Authors On Authors: Poet Robert Pinsky On What He’s Reading Now
August 16, 2017
WBUR interviewing Robert Pinsky, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences “This summer, we are doing a series called ‘Authors on Authors…'” View full interview.
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Rhyme and reason: where the teachers go for their poetry fix
July 28, 2017
Boston Globe quoting Robert Pinsky, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences “Nobody at the Favorite Poem Project’s Summer Poetry Institute is preaching or arguing about the importance of teaching poetry in school…” Expert quote: “Poetry is a basic human pleasure.” View full article.
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Looking Back At ‘Election Day November 1884’
November 10, 2016
WBUR Robert Pinsky, College of Arts & Sciences If you think the 2016 campaign was rough, check out the 1884 election. Democrat Grover Cleveland ran against Republican James Blaine. Listen to audio of expert Robert Pinsky here
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Robert Pinsky: ‘I don’t like the idea that poetry is marketed’
August 8, 2015
Irish Times Robert Pinsky, College of Arts & Sciences The term “poet-in-residence” suggests a leisurely period of domicile: a year at a university, perhaps, or a season in some crumbling mansion by the sea. But when the residency takes place within the lifespan of a 10-day arts festival, the poet in question doesn’t have much […]
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TV Confessions: Robert Pinsky
May 29, 2015
Boston Globe (subscription required) Robert Pinsky, College of Arts & Sciences View full Q&A with expert Robert Pinsky
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Poet Robert Pinsky launches ‘massive open online course’
September 30, 2014
Boston Globe (subscription required) Robert Pinsky, College of Arts & Sciences More than half of the 12,000 students who had preregistered by Friday for The Art of Poetry, Robert Pinsky’s new “massive open online course,” are from overseas… Expert quote: “It’s partly an attempt to create something that doesn’t feel provincial. It feels global.” View full article
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Statue of Edgar Allan Poe to be unveiled in Boston
September 30, 2014
Boston Globe (subscription required) Robert Pinsky, College of Arts & Sciences The 18-year-old author of “Tamerlane and Other Poems,” published in 1827, was such an unknown that he didn’t bother to affix his own name to the collection. Instead, he credited it simply to “a Bostonian.”… Expert quote: “There’s a tendency for American poets in […]
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Robert Pinsky: Poetry Will Outlive Status Updates, Tweets — Even The Web Itself
March 29, 2014
WBUR “Cognoscenti” Robert Pinsky, College of Arts & Sciences April is National Poetry Month. It is also, apparently, National Pecan Month and National Welding Month. But the increasingly common practice of claiming months to spread awareness doesn’t deter poetry enthusiasts… Expert quote: “Poetry, by its nature, is on a human scale: the medium is one […]
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Robert Pinsky merges poetry and jazz
March 12, 2014
Boston Globe (subscription required) Robert Pinsky, College of Arts & Sciences You’d think that being Poet Laureate of the United States would be enough for a person… View full article about expert Robert Pinsky
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Sound is part of the process for Robert Pinsky
December 8, 2013
Boston Globe (subscription required) Robert Pinsky, College of Arts & Sciences When I arrived at poet laureate emeritus Robert Pinsky’s Cambridge home, he greeted me with the poem that appears here… View full aritlce
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