U.S. Poet Laureate, 1997-2000
Robert Pinsky was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, in 1940. He is the author of nine poetry collections, including Sadness and Happiness (1975), The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 (1996), and At the Foundling Hospital (2016). In addition to editing five anthologies, Pinsky has published several books of prose, translations of Dante and Czesław Miłosz, and the computerized novel Mindwheel (1985). His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Stanford University, and he has received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the William Carlos Williams Award and the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and the Oscar Blumenthal Prize from Poetry magazine. From 1997-2000, Pinsky served as the U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress; he later served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2004-2010. Pinsky has taught writing at Wellesley College, the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently a professor in the graduate writing program at Boston University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Audio Recordings of Robert Pinsky
- As part of Poetry in English at the Library of Congress, Amy Clampitt and Robert Pinsky reading their poems in the Coolidge Auditorium, Feb. 27, 1984
- Dorothy Barresi and Robert Pinsky reading their poems in the Mumford Room, Nov. 12, 1992
- “Frank Bidart and Robert Pinsky reading their poems in the Mumford Room, Library of Congress, Dec. 7, 1995
- Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry Robert Pinsky reading his poems in the Montpelier Room, Library of Congress, May 7, 1998
- As part of Poetry in English at the Library of Congress, Robert Pinsky reading selections from the anthology, Americans’ favorite poems, the Favorite Poem Project and discussing them in the Mumford Room, Library of Congress, Oct. 7, 1999