In the following interview, which was conducted originally on February 2, 1993 in Thomas's classroom at Davidson College, Pinsky discusses the art of translation, the cultural ways Judaism affected him personally, the influence of Eastern philosophies in his poems, and the transformative, historical aspects of his poetics.

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.

In the essay below, Longenbach traces Pinsky's artistic development in terms of the poet's "deep awareness—sometimes wariness, sometimes worship"—of historical, linguistic, and literary forces at work in his art.

In the following essay, Longenbach traces the development of Pinsky's unique poetic vision.

In the essay below, Pinsky contemplates the social contexts of American poetry in contemporary America, tracing the development of its various manifestations and emphasizing the individual scale of its character.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture at the Napa Poetry Conference in August, 1984, Pinsky outlines the social responsibilities of poets.

Below, Glück explains the ways a narrative impulse informs Pinsky's poetics, comparing his poetry with that of Stephen Dobyns.

In the following essay, Parini offers a positive assessment of An Explanation of America, praising his unique and original verse.

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 accurate."

In the following review, Sacks lauds the "openness" of Pinsky's poetry.

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 Poetry (1989), he describes the former as "essential," even though "it promises more 'world' than it delivers."

McClatchy is an American poet, critic, and educator whose books of poetry include The Rest of the Way (1990). In the following review of The Want Bone, he concludes that Pinsky writes "poems as spirited and weighty, eloquent and startling, as any poet of his generation."

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 Other Poems (1989), McCorkle discusses the ways in which Pinsky engages public and political issues in his poetry.

In the following excerpt, Corn deems Pinsky's poetry "accurate, truthful, conscientious" and compares his work to that of Walt Whitman.

In the following favorable review of The Figured Wheel, Longenbach deems the collection "the most scrupulously intelligent body of work produced by an American poet in the past twenty-five years. "

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 rhyme scheme.

In the following positive review of The Want Bone, Bogen hails Pinsky's ability to incorporate a multitude of images, motifs, and styles into his poetry without dissipating his main thematic concerns.

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.

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, Politics and Poetry, the 20th Century (1988), he discusses the ways in which Pinsky addresses political matters in the reviews and essays collected in the volume.

In the following essay, Schemo discusses the strengths and weaknesses of Pinsky's translation. She also reports on Pinsky's reaction to the attention The Inferno of Dante has received.

In the following review, Pollitt provides a laudatory review of Pinsky's collected poems, The Figured Wheel.

Below, Pollitt admires the freshness of Pinsky's verse in The Figured Wheel.

Ahern is an American educator and noted Dante scholar. In the following favorable review of The Inferno of Dante, he discusses the difficulties of rendering into English Dante's "vulgar eloquence" and his polyphony of narrative voices.

Robert Pinsky is a balanced critic, and furthermore he knows that merely avoiding the dangers of partisanship or scrupulosity can produce a limply, or even glibly, enervated criticism. Bored good will cannot provide a very satisfactory antidote for the failures of extremism. One way Pinsky avoids extreme partisanship, intentionally or not, is by dealing with themes, motives, and styles [in The Situation of Poetry: Contemporary Poetry and Its Traditions], rather than by discussing single poets in the overall...

[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, which divides into three parts ("Its Many Fragments," "Its Great Emptiness," "Its Everlasting Possibility"), each of which has four titled sections. The twelve sections give him an "epic" arrangement and might make us think of Milton, although Pinsky, unfashionably and polemically, sees Ameri...

In the following review of The Inferno of Dante, Kart compares Pinsky's translation with that of C. H. Sisson, finding Pinsky's inferior.

In the following essay, Blumenthal provides an overview of Pinsky's life and career, reporting his response to being named poet laureate of the United States.

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 in which he examines the theme of "human wishes and the obstacles to them."

Mitchell is an American poet, critic, and educator. In the following review, he praises Pinsky's poetic ambitions and the combination of "boldness" and "restraint" in the poems in History of My Heart.

Corey is an American poet, critic, and educator. In the following review, a portion of which appeared in CLC-38, he praises Pinsky for the depth of his insights and for not succumbing to sentimentality as he offers hopeful "assertions" about the human condition.

Not the least remarkable thing about Robert Pinsky's remarkable [An Explanation of America] is that it seems to defy not only all the dominant trends in contemporary poetry but all the dominant notions—both American and non-American—of what is to be expected of an American poet. The very title looks and sounds like a provocative anachronism, reminiscent as it is of Pope's An Essay on Man. As for "explanation," the long-established dogma is that poetry does not and m...

In the following favorable review of Poetry and the World, Brown summarizes Pinsky's main critical points and contends that the book's most interesting pieces are the ones which relate memories of Pinsky's childhood and family.

In its philosophical approach, classical learning, and orderly structure, [An Explanation of America] resembles the work of William Cullen Bryant more than that of Hart Crane, but it is not old fashioned. It is as American as Bryant's and Crane's long poems, as embedded in the past, and as identified with the woods and prairies. Does America have an explanation? More basically, Pinsky says, we need to ask: Is there a country to explain? Yes, but not out there: in our own imaginations and dream...

It may be, as William Carlos Williams observed, that "the pure products of America go crazy." But Robert Pinsky in his ambitious and immensely likable long poem, "An Explanation of America," sets out to counter that impression by imagining a being capable of living sanely among American dreams of speed and space…. The tone of the poem, blank verse throughout, is inquiring and grave, though what one remembers are the opportunities it gives the father to play through a reper...

The mind at work in "The Situation of Poetry" is lively, fresh and critical without being obsessed by the rigor of criticism…. Immensely well-read in contemporary poetry, Pinsky moves among those poems on the assumption that traditional themes are still valid. He believes, and is pleased to show, that contemporary poetry exhibits more continuity than change…. According to his sense of life and literature, the important things do not change, presumably because he identifies the im...

[An Explanation of America] is not quite so presumptuous as it sounds. If an explanation of America is to be had from it at all, it's not one that can be quickly grasped. This is just as well: when Pinsky does allow himself some fairly explicit analysis of contemporary America—on Vietnam: 'I think it made our country older, forever'—he can sound bland and complacent. For the most part, though, the poem is about the difficulty of explaining America: knowing that the notions...

[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 upon effortlessly digested commonplaces now has an occasionally ponderous air, lapsing too easily into boring prosiness…. Pinsky shows off his essayist side in this long poem …, his skill with the ordinary or with niceties of personal relationships in abeyance for a while. His virtues include the ability to construct a large-sca...