Dr. Robert Pinsky will be speaking on April 10, 2008 at 7:00 PM in Carter Hall-D
in the University Center Building (The student center
on the campus of the University of Southern Indiana). The event is free and open to the public.
A book signing will follow.
ROBERT PINSKY
United States Poet
Laureate (1997–2000), Translator, Essayist, and Teacher
Robert Pinsky’s first two
terms as United States Poet Laureate were marked by such visible dynamism, and
such national enthusiasm in response, that the Library of Congress appointed
him to an unprecedented third term. Throughout his career, Pinsky has been
dedicated to identifying and invigorating poetry’s place in the world.
As Poet Laureate, Robert
Pinsky became a public ambassador for poetry, founding the Favorite Poem
Project, in which thousands of Americans — of varying backgrounds, all ages,
and from every state — shared their favorite poems. Pinsky believed that,
contrary to stereotype, poetry had a vigorous presence in the American cultural
landscape. The project sought to document that presence, giving voice to the
American audience for poetry. The anthology Americans’ Favorite Poems, which include letters from project participants, is
in its eighteenth printing. The
new anthology, An Invitation to Poetry, comes with a DVD featuring twenty-seven of the FPP video segments, as
seen on PBS.
Elegant and tough, vividly
imaginative, Pinsky’s poems have earned praise for their wild musical energy
and ambitious range. His book Gulf Music (FSG, fall 2007) is his
seventh volume of poetry. His The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 was a Pulitzer Prize nominee and received the Lenore
Marshall Award and the Ambassador Book Award of the English Speaking
Union. His most recent chapbook is
entitled First Things to Hand
(Sarabande, May 2006).
Pinsky’s books about poetry
include Poetry and the World,
nominated for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, The Sounds of Poetry, and more recently, Democracy, Culture and the
Voice of Poetry. Pinsky contends that,
though intimate, poetry addresses cultural needs by communicating a shared set
of social meanings, a paradox that becomes part of his effort to demonstrate
the complexity of American poetry.
Robert Pinsky’s landmark,
best-selling translation of The Inferno of Dante received the Los Angeles Times Book Award in poetry and the Howard Morton Landon
Prize for translation. He is also co-translator of The Separate Notebooks, poems by Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz. Pinsky’s
prose book, The Life of David, is a
lively retelling and examination of the David stories, narrating a wealth of
legend as well as scripture.
The poetry editor for the online magazine Slate, for seven years Pinsky appeared regularly on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He writes the weekly “Poet’s Choice” column for the Washington Post. He was elected in 1999 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Pinsky’s poems appear in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly,The Threepenny Review, American Poetry Review, and frequently in The Best American Poetry anthologies. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University. Robert Pinsky is also the winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award, the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Lenore Marshall, and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture’s 2006 Jewish Cultural Achievement Award in Literary Arts. He is one of the few members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters to have appeared on “The Simpsons.”
“In his poems Pinsky talks, with democratic warmth
and intimacy, to the common things of this world. His extraordinary poems remind us that he has always
embodied
the very ideal he proposes for what a poet can do.”
— Lloyd Schwarz, The Boston Phoenix
“Among the many writers who have come of age in our
fin de siecle, none has
succeeded more completely as a poet, critic and translator than Robert Pinsky.”
—James Longenbach, The Nation
Dr. Pinsky appears as a speaker courtesy of the
S t e v
e n B a r c l a y A g
e n c
y
and through funds made available in part by Vectren
Corporation