Robert Pinsky  (b. 1940) LINKS Robert Pinsky—Cover Page http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/pinsky/ The Internet Poetry Archive’s “Cover Page” on Robert Pinsky is adorned with an attractive photograph of the former U.S. Poet Laureate as well as with nine of his poems, his biography and bibliography, and more. The Academy of American Poets—Robert Pinsky http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=204&CFID=2533037&CFTOKEN=14526258 In addition to Pinsky’s photograph and biography, the Academy of American Poets reprints Pinsky’s poems “The Refinery” and “Shirt” and an interview from The American Poet. Meridian: Interview with Robert Pinsky http://www.poems.com/pinskint.htm “I grew up with the idea that to practice an art was to be involved in every part of it and to try to involve art in every part of life,” says Robert Pinsky, in an interview with Meridian, a new journal at the University of Virginia, reprinted on Poetry Daily’s Web site. Salon: Robert Pinsky http://www.salon.com/weekly/pinsky.html “He began his artistic career as a saxophone player, but Robert Pinsky switched to poetry in college,” Salon Magazine tells us in its brief biography of Pinsky. Pinsky, when he is not writing his own work, is also a celebrated translator, notably of Dante’s Inferno. Salon reprints his translation of “Eve Tempted by the Serpent” by Defendente Ferrari. BIOGRAPHY The son of an optician, Pinsky was born in Long Branch, New Jersey. He earned a B.A. (1962) from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. (1966) from Stanford University, after which he embarked on a distinguished academic career. He taught at the University of Chicago, Wellesley College, and the University of California at Berkeley, and is now a professor of English at Boston University. Sadness and Happiness, his first book of poems, appeared in 1975. His most recent collection, Jersey Rain, appeared in 2000. Along the way, he created a new and much acclaimed translation of Dante’s Inferno (1994). He has won numerous awards, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award (1979). In 1995, he won a Los Angeles Times Book Review Award and the Landon Prize for translation, both for the Dante translation. In his critical essays, Pinsky reveals his respect for the literary tradition. He asserts that poets need to “find a language for presenting the role of a conscious soul in an unconscious world.”