{"id":2367,"date":"2017-11-09T14:48:15","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T14:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&amp;p=2367"},"modified":"2017-11-09T14:48:15","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T14:48:15","slug":"robert-pinsky","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/robert-pinsky\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Robert Pinsky"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2384\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2384\" style=\"width: 199px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2384 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2017\/11\/Robert-Pinsky-head-shot-resized-bio-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/11\/Robert-Pinsky-head-shot-resized-bio-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/11\/Robert-Pinsky-head-shot-resized-bio.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2384\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Eric Antoniou.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Robert Pinsky\u2019s works of poetry include <em>Sadness and Happiness<\/em> (Princeton University Press, 1975), <em>The Want Bone<\/em>, (Ecco Press, 1990), <em>The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996<\/em>\u00a0(Farrar, Straus, 1996), and <em>Gulf Music: Poems<\/em> (Farrar, Straus 2007). He has also published prose, including the books <em>Poetry and the World<\/em> (Ecco Press, 1988),\u00a0<em>The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide <\/em>(Farrar, Straus ,1998),\u00a0<em>Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry<\/em>\u00a0(Princeton University Press, 2002) and <em>The Life of David<\/em> (Schoken, 2005). He has edited many anthologies, among them<em> Americans\u2019 Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Anthology<\/em> (Norton, 2000), co-edited with Maggie Dietz, which grew out of the project he directed as US Poet Laureate from 1997 to 2000. This project invited Americans from all walks of life to name their favorite poems and to both record those poems for the audio archives of the Library of Congress and to capture their own reflections on why a particular poem called to them. Few contemporary poets have had as visible a presence as Robert Pinsky\u2014he has appeared on both <em>The Colbert Report<\/em> and on an episode of <em>The Simpsons<\/em>. Yet, though his work and presence in popular culture have often had exalted status, his most recent book of poetry,\u00a0<em>At the Foundling Hospital<\/em>, manages to delicately balance the universal and the personal, taking the reader from civilization&#8217;s battles to the side of a friend\u2019s hospital bed. The poems reach out and take in both humanity&#8217;s sweep and what it means to be, simply, an individual human.\u00a0<strong>Please also see our <a href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/restless-curiosity\/\">review of\u00a0<\/a><em>At the Foundling Hospital<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2385\" src=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2017\/11\/Pinsky-Robert-Americas-Favorite-Poems-cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"123\" height=\"189\" \/>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2386\" src=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2017\/11\/Pinsky-Robert-The-Life-of-David-cover-198x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/11\/Pinsky-Robert-The-Life-of-David-cover-198x300.jpg 198w, https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/11\/Pinsky-Robert-The-Life-of-David-cover.jpg 329w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 198px) 100vw, 198px\" \/>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2387\" src=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2017\/11\/Pinsky-cover-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/11\/Pinsky-cover-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/11\/Pinsky-cover-682x1024.jpg 682w, https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/11\/Pinsky-cover.jpg 719w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Danielle Kessinger for <em>The Florida Review<\/em>:<\/strong><br \/>\nOne of the things that struck me on reading\u00a0<em>At the Foundling Hospital<\/em>\u00a0is how often you took elements that didn\u2019t have obvious links and connected them. For example, in your poem \u201cCunning and Greed,\u201d you have David Copperfield and the collapse of bee colonies. Do you find these combinations come to you organically or do you find yourself gathering them together before you put pen to paper?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Robert Pinsky:<br \/>\n<\/strong>One of the nicest compliments I ever received from my wife was about something I made with my hands. She said, \u201cI love your patshke imagination.\u201d\u00a0 <em>Patshke <\/em>is a Yiddish word that sort of means patting something together. I\u2019ve never been good at learning everything about anything. I don\u2019t have a scholarly mind, but I do have a kind of oddball mind. I enjoy finding similarities in things that aren\u2019t similar. For me poetry, compared to a long, naturalistic novel, is very good at making lightning moves. I sometimes say prose is like wading. You move through the medium slowly. You see things down at your toes. Poetry is like ice skating. So, you can move through a lot of territory very quickly. I get bored very, very easily, much more easily than most people, which is why I like poetry.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>TFR<\/em>:<\/strong><br \/>\nYou\u2019ve also presented your poetry in non-traditional ways beyond simply on the page or read aloud. You often perform with musicians.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pinsky:<\/strong><br \/>\nI love working with jazz musicians, yes.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>TFR<\/em>:<\/strong><br \/>\nWhen you\u2019ve worked with jazz musicians, were you usually choosing the poem you wanted to read based on the piece of music or was the piece of music pared with the poem as the starting point?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pinsky:<\/strong><br \/>\nNone of the above. We improvise, and it\u2019s based on sound. I hope it\u2019s not me reciting to music. I try to make my voice like a horn. The pianist I\u2019ve done a couple CDs with, Laurence Hobgood keeps the poem text on the desk of the piano and looks at it like you\u2019d look at a musical score, and I try hard to listen to him, and he listens to me. Sometimes we might have a rough plan, a set of chord changes. I started out as a musician. I don\u2019t speak musician fluently, but I know enough of it to be able to discuss with Lawrence what we\u2019re doing. It isn\u2019t basing music on the words. It\u2019s not songwriting. It isn\u2019t basing songs on words, or words on music. It\u2019s making music together.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>TFR<\/em>:<\/strong><br \/>\nHow do you find the audience reacts to that collaboration?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pinsky:<\/strong><br \/>\nIt works so much in our favor because people are assuming they\u2019re going to be embarrassed or bored. They are thinking, <em>This guy is going to say poetry with music<\/em>, and you can almost see the nervous panic in their faces. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>TFR<\/em>:<\/strong><br \/>\nAs US Poet Laurette when you were working on the Favorite Poem Project [see web links below]\u2014which invited Americans to name and record their favorite poem\u2014you found readers that represented a diverse group of Americans. What did you find that was common among the readers, even if what they picked was unexpected?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pinsky:<\/strong><br \/>\nIt was really the readers that were unexpected. It is very important to go to <em>favoritepoem.org<\/em> and to see that there are no poets, no literary critics, and no professors of poetry. You see a construction worker read lines of Walt Whitman and then talk about those lines very cogently. You see a Cambodian-American high school student in San Jose read a Langston Hughes poem, and she doesn\u2019t mention that Langston Hughes was a black man. She relates the Langston Hughes poem to the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot\u2019s regime. A US Marine with a Hispanic surname recites [William Butler] Yeats&#8217; \u201cPolitics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the only website I know that is actually about poetry in the sense that it\u2019s not about poets, or smart things people say about poems. It\u2019s about poetry in people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>TFR<\/em>:<\/strong><br \/>\nHow do you think poetry is important to people\u2019s lives, not just the act of writing it, but the act of reading and reciting it?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pinsky:<\/strong><br \/>\nIt\u2019s like answering the same question about cuisine as distinct from nutrition or lovemaking as distinct from procreation. I don\u2019t know what the importance is. I don\u2019t know why people like these things, but we seem to be an art-consuming animal. We don\u2019t just walk around, we also dance. We don\u2019t just talk, we also like to recite. If you have a tiny child, when you cradle it, it likes to be sung to. I\u2019ve discovered an infant curls up in exactly the same way when you recite poetry as when you sing. It\u2019s fundamental. It\u2019s there. It\u2019s a very basic part of human nature.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>TFR<\/em>:<\/strong><br \/>\nHaving published your first book of poetry in 1975 and your most recent book of poetry in 2016, do you think that your approach to assembling your pieces into a larger work has changed over time?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pinsky:<\/strong><br \/>\nEach book demands waiting for the physical materials to tell you what each poem is about and what the book is about. In the course of writing that book, <em>At the Foundling Hospital<\/em>, I had two or three friends die. That affected the subject of the foundling and culture. The foundling is taken into a culture it doesn\u2019t particularly choose. It\u2019s told <em>you\u2019re going to be a woman, you\u2019re going to be Korean, you\u2019re going to speak English, you\u2019re going to be gay, you\u2019re going to be subject to these diseases and have these immunities<\/em>. The little child is just a squirmy little thing. It doesn\u2019t know all that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>One of my friends was in a coma before he died. People sing to you when you are in a coma, they read, tell stories, tell jokes, and I found myself in the poem &#8220;In a Coma&#8221; trying to assemble the music, the news stories, the sports teams that he and I experienced when we were young. The sort of funerary or memorial aspect of the poem changed and was changed by the book\u2019s project of talking about the foundling hospital and the infant foundlings and their growing up.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Identity is not the kind of fixed category that political discourse sometimes tries to make out of it.\u00a0Culture is always mixed and fluid.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Favorite Poem Project Links:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.favoritepoem.org\/poem_FromSongofMyself.html\">http:\/\/www.favoritepoem.org\/poem_FromSongofMyself.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.favoritepoem.org\/poem_MinstrelMan.html\">http:\/\/www.favoritepoem.org\/poem_MinstrelMan.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.favoritepoem.org\/poem_Politics.html\">http:\/\/www.favoritepoem.org\/poem_Politics.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We don&#8217;t just walk around, we also dance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2383,"template":"","categories":[9,140],"tags":[6,396,198,203,397,398],"class_list":["post-2367","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-interview","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-at-the-foundling-hospital","tag-danielle-kessinger","tag-grief","tag-identity","tag-robert-pinsky"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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