By Matt Robinson
Contributing Writer
BOSTON – Three-time Poet Laureate of the United States Robert Pinsky rubbed elbows with presidents and other dignitaries from around the world for quite some time and had previous teaching stints at both UC-Berkeley and Wellesley College. But his nearly 30-year tenure as a professor at Boston University represented his longest stay at one institution.
And Boston University honored its Warren Distinguished Professor when he put his teaching pen down this year. As he started to compose the next stanza of his life, the New Jersey native reflected on his multi-faceted career and the many words and verses that have made it up.
Photo/Eric Antoniou
Early roots in music
He first found both success and identity as a saxophone player. He has since produced a popular series of albums of what he calls “PoemJazz” with musicians Laurence Hobgood and Stan Strickland (with whom he will perform July 16 at the Truro Center for the Arts), and other talented friends. Pinsky (who has also performed with the likes of Vijay Iyer, Josh Ritter, and Bruce Springsteen) is best known as a syllable player.
“I had fantasies of being a wonderful jazz musician someday.” he admitted, “but all the time, I was thinking about the sounds of words.”
He recalled being “surrounded by prose writers” such as Alan Cheuse, Digby Diehle and Pete Najarian (“I could remember the sound of typewriters going like mad,” he winced). Pinsky also remembered the lessons he gleaned from Ezra Pound’s “ABC of Reading” regarding what he calls “sentence melodies” such as which vowels were long and which were short.
“I could hear that,” he observed, “and other people apparently couldn’t!”
As these rhythms became deeply ingrained in him, Pinsky says that, even when the most prolific prose pounder prognosticated, all he could hear was the “music” of the words.
“Poetry is the sister art of music,” he maintained. “It was through the ear and the voice that I realized it was the art I wanted to give my life to.” Though he reflected that poetry was once a road to “elevation” and inclusion in America, Pinsky opines that some schools still segregate poetry in ways that make it difficult to approach.
Photo/Eric Antoniou
“A lot of the academic criticism I have been subjected to concentrates on defining how poetry is different from other ways of language,” he noted. “I have tried to think about what it has in common with other kinds of language.’
The high and the low
Many consider poetry to be a “high-brow” art (often to the point of being seen as unreachable and unfathomable by the “average” person). Pinsky says that, in the same way as a conversation can be made interesting or dull or a joke told in a way that makes it funny or dead, a poem can be made interesting or moving…or not.
Tellingly, when asked what the first poem he recalled turning him on to the form, Pinsky expressed a desire to reply with some “high-brow” answer, but admits that it was most likely one of the “obscene” rhymes that he used to share with classmates in the schoolyard.
“That was probably more in my mind than Wordsworth,” Pinsky laughed.
As it often combines “high” and “low,” Pinsky proposed, poetry can reach people in more engaging ways than other forms of writing and communication. Perhaps that is why so many people apparently love it.
Favorite Poem Project
The most obvious evidence of this is Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project (http://www.favoritepoem.org), a collection of people from all walks of life sharing the poems that have the most meaning to them and, in the process, encouraging others to find their own voice in the form.
“It seemed like a simple idea,” Pinsky reasoned. “Have people read poems they like reading…and emphasize the voice and the reader, and not an academic or show business setting.”
When Pinsky put out the call for participants as an official act of the Poet Laureate (a title he held a record three times!), 18,000 people responded.
“Seeing the first videos was terrifically confirming,” he recalled happily. “I loved it!”
While the official call went out some time ago, poems continue to pour in from poetry lovers from around the world.
“At BU, when we have had a distinguished speaker…we invited them to read a poem they like,” Pinsky explained, proud of his literary legacy and grateful to his academic home for supporting it.
In addition to demonstrating the broad appeal of poetry, the Project has also encouraged some to risk a great deal on its behalf. “We had an Asian filmmaker who gave pieces of Leaves of Grass to a girl he was sweet on,” Pinsky noted, citing the popular but often controversial Whitman verse, “and she reported him and he went to jail!”
On a happier note, Pinsky also recalled Olympic champion (and fellow Terrier) Mike Eruzione talking about how his father had traditionally recited Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” at family gatherings.
“Mixing things is what I believe in,” suggested Pinsky. He has also written an opera libretto, a survey of the life of King David, and a best-selling translation of Dante’s “Inferno” and also edited the 25th anniversary volume of “The Best of American Poetry” series, developed an interactive fiction game, and appeared on “The Simpsons.” “I’d like to think that unexpected combinations of high and low have something to do with what I have to offer as a poet,” he added.
When asked about what confirmed his life as a writer, the man who has created hundreds of poems (the first two collections of which are about to be republished by Princeton University Press) looked back all the way to his days studying under famed cultural historian Paul Fussell at Rutgers.
“When the college literary magazine…accepted pieces I wrote,” Pinsky said, “that felt very big-time!” The memory of seeing his name in print that first time was strong, and Pinsky maintained that he still gets that same thrill seeing his latest publishing effort (Proverbs of Limbo, which came out in 2024) today.
“I am proud to say some poets I admire—young and old—have told me how much the new book means to them,” he smiled. “If those books and the PoemJazz albums have meant something to makers that I respect, that is fulfilling.”
The next chapter
In addition to being lauded by his peers, Pinsky was recently feted at BU when he announced that he was stepping down after nearly 30 years on Commonwealth Avenue. “I originally was invited to do a visiting year at BU, on a year’s leave from Berkeley,” recalled Pinsky, “but the BU Creative Writing Program made me want to stay here.”
Pinsky knew New England from having taught at Wellesley College but preferred the West Coast weather (and food). “Our Berkeley friends thought my wife and I were crazy…to come back to Boston,” he admitted, “but I have not regretted it, ever.”
As he prepares for whatever is next, Pinsky, asked what inspires his muse today, quickly responded with, “fear and rage.” “I do not think that poetry is a good medium for propaganda or persuasion,” he demurred, “but I hope that I can write about the feelings inspired by the daily news these days.”
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