Skip to main contentRobert Pinsky is the former Poet Laureate of the United States (1997-2000). He has translated Dante, written a Biblical biography of King David and created the Favorite Poem Project, which collects videos of people reading their favorite poems. And if you call him Professor Pinsky, he will kick you in the balls.
Pinsky is an ironic point of light in the dimming world of verse: no tweed-jacketed fuddy-duddy, he's dedicated to bridging the increasing gap between poetry and everyday life. That goal manifests itself in the opera he's written, Death and the Powers, which premiers at the Monte Carlo Opera in September. Or in how one of his favorite perks of the Laureateship was being announced from the ring of a championship welterweight bout at Caesars Atlantic City. ("Oscar de la Hoya versus Wilfredo Rivera. That was fun," he says.) Or in the way he eschews pretense—that "kick in the balls" threat, a beloved anecdote of Boston University student David Macey, was issued to another graduate student at one of Pinsky's backyard barbecues.
There's no telling what topics Pinsky will be kicking around when he appears tonight, Wednesday, March 21, at the Wonder Ballroom—"I don't plan ahead," he told WW via email this week—but odds are he'll keep fighting for poetry as a vital, verbal practice. "Poetry, the art based on the sounds of language, fills a fundamental appetite," he wrote. "Like music and dance, poetry is at the core of human intelligence. Our evolution and survival have depended on these deep, old ways of communicating with one another, with our peers and ancestors and dependents. For tens of thousands of years, poetry has been central and basic to our education and our culture. There's no 'caring about it' or not, as if it were a brand of soap."
The next morning, he wrote again: "The Koran is entirely in poetry, I believe. So is much of the Bible. We care about them."
So is there a particular Pinsky poem that he thinks Portlanders should care about? "'Poem With Refrains' in The Figured Wheel and 'The Green Piano' in Jersey Rain both involve my mother, an unhappy person with a brain injury, who had very happy, idealized memories of visiting her grandfather's 'estate' [she called it] in Portland, when she was a child. She did exaggerate," he says. But since neither of those stanzas refer directly to the Rose City, Pinsky suggests his "Samurai Song." It doesn't mention us either, but it does contain lines that epitomize Pinsky's passion: "When I had no temple I made/ My voice my temple. I have/ No priest, my tongue is my choir." AARON MESH.
Poetry Northwest
WWeek 2015