Background
Pinsky, Robert Neal was born on October 20, 1940 in Long Branch, New Jersey, United States. Son of Milford Simon and Sylvia (Eisenberg) Pinsky.
( From Sadness and Happiness: Poems by Robert Pinsky: C...)
From Sadness and Happiness: Poems by Robert Pinsky: CEREMONY FOR ANY BEGINNING Robert Pinsky ? Against weather, and the random Harpies--mood, circumstance, the laws Of biography, chance, physics-- The unseasonable soul holds forth, Eager for form as a renowned Pedant, the emperor's man of worth, Hereditary arbiter of manners. Soul, one's life is one's enemy. As the small children learn, what happens Takes over, and what you were goes away. They learn it in sardonic soft Comments of the weather, when it sharpens The hard surfaces of daylight: light Winds, vague in direction, like blades Lavishing their brilliant strokes All over a wrecked house, The nude wallpaper and the brute Intelligence of the torn pipes. Therefore when you marry or build Pray to be untrue to the plain Dominance of your own weather, how it keeps Going even in the woods when not A soul is there, and how it implies Always that separate, cold Splendidness, uncouth and unkind-- On chilly, unclouded mornings, Torrential sunlight and moist air, Leafage and solid bark breathing the mist.
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( Cathartic, refreshing new work by the American favorite...)
Cathartic, refreshing new work by the American favorite Tiptoe on the globe. Gazing nowhere in particular, the slender Thunderer surrounded by thunder, Fire zigzag in his grasp, labeled "Spirit Of Communication"---unhistorical, Pure, the merciless messenger. --from "A Phonebook Cover Hermes of the Nineteen-forties" Innovative, engaging poems from a leading American poet. Stone wheel that sharpens the blade that mows the grain,Wheel of the sunflower turning, wheel that turnsThe spiral press that squeezes the oil expressedFrom shale or olives. Particles that turn mudOn the potter's wheel that spins to form the vesselThat holds the oil that drips to cool the blade.--from "Biography"Jersey Rain takes up a central American subject: the emotional power of inventions, devices, and homemade imaginings -- from the alphabet and the lyre through the steel drum and piano to the record player, digital computer, and television. Formally innovative and highly readable poems like "ABC," "Ode to Meaning," "To Television," and "The Green Piano" meditate a life guided by the quick, artful tinkerer-god Hermes: deity of music and deception, escort of the dead, inventor of instruments, brilliant messenger, and trickster of heaven. Tiptoe on the globe. Gazing nowhere in particular, the slender Thunderer surrounded by thunder, Fire zigzag in his grasp, labeled "Spirit Of Communication"---unhistorical, Pure, the merciless messenger. --from "A Phonebook Cover Hermes of the Nineteen-forties" Jersey Rain -- at once complex and aboveboard -- marks a new, strong, lyrical stage of Robert Pinsky's work. Assembled here are poems -- some of the finest of his career -- that together compose a sweeping and embattled meditation on the themes of a life guided by Hermes: deity of music and deception, escort of the dead, inventor of instruments, brilliant messenger and trickster of heaven.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374527725/?tag=2022091-20
( Dollars, dolors. Callings and contrivances. King Zulu. ...)
Dollars, dolors. Callings and contrivances. King Zulu. Comus. Sephardic ju-ju and verses. Voodoo mojo, Special Forces. Henry formed a group named Professor Longhair and his Shuffling Hungarians. After so much renunciation And invention, is this the image of the promised end? All music haunted by all the music of the dead forever. Becky haunted forever by Pearl the daughter she abandoned For love, O try my tra-la-la, ma la belle, mah walla-woe. --from "Gulf Music" An improvised, even desperate music, yearning toward knowledge across a gulf, informs Robert Pinsky's first book of poetry since Jersey Rain (2000). On the large scale of war or the personal scale of family history, in the movements of people and cultures across oceans or between eras, these poems discover connections between things seemingly disparate. Gulf Music is perhaps the most ambitious, politically impassioned, and inventive book by this major American poet.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374531471/?tag=2022091-20
( From An Explanation of America: LAIR Robert Pinsky ...)
From An Explanation of America: LAIR Robert Pinsky Inexhaustible, delicate, as if Without source or medium, daylight Undoes the mind; the infinite, Empty actual is too bright, Scattering to where the road Whispers, through a mile of woods … Later, how quiet the house is: Dusk-like and refined, The sweet Phoebe-note Piercing from the trees; The calm globe of the morning, Things to read or to write Ranged on a table; the brain A dark, stubborn current that breathes Blood, a deaf wadding, The hands feeding it paper And sensations of wood or metal On its own terms. Trying to read I persist a while, finish the recognition By my breath of a dead giant's breath-- Stayed by the space of a rhythm, Witnessing the blue gulf of the air.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691013608/?tag=2022091-20
( In this book Robert Pinsky writes about contemporary po...)
In this book Robert Pinsky writes about contemporary poetry as it reflects its modernist and Romantic past. He isolates certain persistent ideas about poetry's situation relative to life and focuses on the conflict the poet faces between the nature of words and poetic forms on one side, and the nature of experience on the other. The author ranges for his often surprising examples from Keats to the great modernists such as Stevens and Williams, to the contents of recent magazines. He considers work by Ammons, Ashbery, Bogan, Ginsberg, Lowell, Merwin, O'Hara, and younger writers, offering judgments and enthusiasms from a viewpoint that is consistent but unstereotyped. Like his poetry, Robert Pinsky's criticism joins the traditional and the innovative in ways that are thoughtful and unmistakably his own. His book is a bold essay on the contemporary situation in poetry, on the dazzling achievements of modernism, and on the nature or "situation" of poetry itself.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691013527/?tag=2022091-20
(The Want Bone, "It’s largely about making, which is also ...)
The Want Bone, "It’s largely about making, which is also destroying. Civilization in all of its horror and ugliness and its beauty consists of, you know, it’s really all the work of Shiva, the Hindu god with the hammer who makes and breaks any artifact you look at." -- Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/088001251X/?tag=2022091-20
("Dollars, dolors. Callings and contrivances. King Zulu. C...)
"Dollars, dolors. Callings and contrivances. King Zulu. Comus. Sephardic ju-ju and verses. Voodoo mojo, Special Forces. Henry formed a group named Professor Longhair and his Shuffling Hungarians. After so much renunciation And invention, is this the image of the promised end? All music haunted by all the music of the dead forever. Becky haunted forever by Pearl the daughter she abandoned For love, O try my tra-la-la, ma la belle, mah walla-woe. "--from "Gulf Music" An improvised, even desperate music, yearning toward knowledge across a gulf, informs Robert Pinsky's first book of poetry since "Jersey Rain "(2000). On the large scale of war or the personal scale of family history, in the movements of people and cultures across oceans or between eras, these poems discover connections between things seemingly disparate. "Gulf Music "is perhaps the most ambitious, politically impassioned, and inventive book by this major American poet.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0079EXWBY/?tag=2022091-20
Pinsky, Robert Neal was born on October 20, 1940 in Long Branch, New Jersey, United States. Son of Milford Simon and Sylvia (Eisenberg) Pinsky.
Bachelor of Arts, Rutgers University, 1962; Doctor of Philosophy, Stanford University, 1966.
Member English faculty, University of Chicago, 1967-1968;
Member English faculty, Wellesley College, 1968-1980;
Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley, 1980-1989;
professor, Boston University, 1980-1989;
professor creative writing, Boston University, since 1989. Poetry editor New Republic magazine, 1978. Visiting lecturer Harvard University.
Hurst professor Washington University, St. Louis.
( From An Explanation of America: LAIR Robert Pinsky ...)
( From Sadness and Happiness: Poems by Robert Pinsky: C...)
( A collection of sharp, entertaining, and informative es...)
( In this book Robert Pinsky writes about contemporary po...)
( In this book Robert Pinsky writes about contemporary po...)
( History of My Heart, winner of the William Carlos Willi...)
( Cathartic, refreshing new work by the American favorite...)
(The Want Bone, "It’s largely about making, which is also ...)
("Dollars, dolors. Callings and contrivances. King Zulu. C...)
( Dollars, dolors. Callings and contrivances. King Zulu. ...)
(Brand New. In Stock. Will be shipped from US. Excellent C...)
(Brand New. In Stock. Will be shipped from US. Excellent C...)
Member American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association.
Married EllenJane Bailey, December 30, 1961. Children: Nicole, Caroline, Elizabeth.