Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. He was the first United States Poet Laureate to serve three terms. Recognized worldwide, Pinsky's work has earned numerous accolades. Pinsky is a professor of English and creative writing in the graduate writing program at Boston University. In 2015, the university named him a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Profe
"I think what holds a poem like this together for me, if it’s held together, is largely meter; this one is in iambic pentameter and iambic pentameter whatever else it is, can be a very good glue. It is a very good way to hold things together. It’s like 4:4 you know."
"I am very interested in memorization which is the process of incorporating a poem, so, I would say the kind of poetry I write is the kind that emphasises the physical qualities of the words."
"Poetry is the most bodliy of arts, the medium of poetry is the column of breath rising from the diaphragm in the individuals chest to be shaped into meaning sounds inside the mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem."
"Part of making a poem is a process of day- dreaming."
"All the mysteries of consciousness flower in the body."
"An underestimated element in poetry, that reading aloud makes clear, is the pause. I mean especially the force of a pause or a couple of pauses close together, contrasted with a longer unit of grammar."
"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."
"An artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond....a good feeling about his art."
"Craft is something you learn by studying models.When a student asks, what is a good book about traditional iambic verse, The Collected Poems of Ben Jonson. What is an excellent book about free verse? The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. What is a good book about short line in ballad metre? The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson."
"Poetry is a vocal art for me, not neccessarilyperformative, it might be reading to one self or recalling some lines by memory.The speaker bringing their own experience to it,changing it with their own sensibility."
