Robert Pinsky Summary

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture at the Napa Poetry Conference in August, 1984, Pinsky outlines the social responsibilities of poets. Certain general ideas come up repeated... Read more

In the following review, Sacks lauds the "openness" of Pinsky's poetry. With his two most recent collections of prose and poetry, Robert Pinsky enlarges his role as one of cont... Read more

In the following interview conducted by several people, Pinsky discusses the problems of translating poetry, the influence of Judaism and Eastern philosophy on his writing, and his poetic philosophy. ... Read more

In the following review, Pollitt provides a laudatory review of Pinsky's collected poems, The Figured Wheel. Robert Pinsky's extraordinarily accomplished and beautiful volume of colle... Read more

Critical Essay by Denis Donoghue The mind at work in "The Situation of Poetry" is lively, fresh and critical without being obsessed by the rigor of criticism…. Immensely well-rea... Read more

Critical Essay by John Fuller [Robert Pinsky's] An Explanation of America is perhaps rather less interesting than his earlier work: the air of infinitely calm and insidious rumination riding u... Read more

Critical Essay by James Finn Cotter In its philosophical approach, classical learning, and orderly structure, [An Explanation of America] resembles the work of William Cullen Bryant more than that of... Read more

Critical Essay by Stephen Yenser [In An Explanation of America Pinsky] organizes rigorously: a brief prefatory lyric and a concluding dedicatory elegy frame the title poem, fifty-five pages long, whi... Read more

In the following essay, Pinsky discusses the theme of horror in Canto XXV of The Inferno. Pinsky also presents his translation of the Canto, demonstrating how he handles Dante's terza rima rhym... Read more

Hirsch is an American poet, critic, and educator. In the following review, he favorably assesses The Inferno of Dante, contending that Pinsky's translation is "fast-paced, idiomatic, and... Read more

In the following review of The Inferno of Dante, Kart compares Pinsky's translation with that of C. H. Sisson, finding Pinsky's inferior. Robert Pinsky (The Want Bone, History of My H... Read more

Libby is an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt from a review in which he examines Pinsky's Poetry and the World and Terrence Des Pres's Praises and Dispraises, Politi... Read more

Breslin is an American poet, critic, and educator. In the following excerpt from a review of Pinsky's Poetry and the World and J. D. McClatchy's White Paper: On Contemporary American Poe... Read more

Corn is an American poet, critic, translator, and educator. In the following highly positive review of The Want Bone, he lauds Pinsky for his "wonderful ear for poetic line" and the ways... Read more

In the following excerpt from a review in which he examines Pinsky's The Want Bone, Irena Klepfisz's A Few Words in the Mother Tongue (1990), and Jerome Rothenberg's Khurbn, and O... Read more

In the essay below, Longenbach traces Pinsky's artistic development in terms of the poet's "deep awareness—sometimes wariness, sometimes worship"—of historica... Read more

Below, Pollitt admires the freshness of Pinsky's verse in The Figured Wheel. Robert Pinsky's extraordinarily accomplished and beautiful volume of collected poems, The Figured Wheel, w... Read more

In the essay below, Mehren summarizes the achievements of Pinsky's life and career, focusing on his passion for making poetry accessible to the masses. A small smile brightened Robert Pinsky... Read more