Robert+Pinsky,+1997-2000


 * Robert Pinsky (1997-2000) **

Robert Pinsky was born on October 20, 1940 in Long Branch, New Jersey. He received a B.A. from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N. J., and earned both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow in creative writing.

He is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently //Gulf Music: Poems// (2007); //Jersey Rain// (2000); //The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996// (1996), which received the 1997 [|Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize] and was a Pulitzer Prize nominee; //The Want Bone// (1990); //History of My Heart// (1984); //An Explanation of America// (1980); and //Sadness and Happiness// (1975).

He is also the author of several prose titles, including //The Life of David// (2006); //Democracy, Culture, and the Voice of Poetry// (2002); //The Sounds of Poetry// (1998), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; //Poetry and the World// (1988); and //The Situation of Poetry//(1977). In 1985 he also released a computerized novel, //Mindwheel//.

Pinsky has published two acclaimed works of translation: //The Inferno of Dante// (1994), which was a Book-of-the-Month-Club Editor's Choice, and received both the //Los Angeles Times// Book Prize and the [|Harold Morton Landon Translation Award] ; and //The Separate Notebooks// by [|Czeslaw Milosz] (with Renata Gorczynski and [|Robert Hass] ).

From 1997 to 2000, he served as the United States Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. During that time, he founded the Favorite Poem Project, a program dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry's role in Americans' lives.In 1999, he co-edited //Americans' Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Anthology// with Maggie Dietz. Other anthologies he has edited include //An Invitation to Poetry// (2004); //Poems to Read// (2002); and //Handbook of Heartbreak// (1998).

His honors include an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, //Poetry// Magazine's Oscar Blumenthal prize, the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. He is currently poetry editor of the weekly Internet magazine [|//Slate//]. Pinsky has taught at both Wellesley College and the University of California, Berkeley, and currently teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University. He lives in Newton Corner, Massachusetts.

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 * Shirt**

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams, The nearly invisible stitches along the collar Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break Or talking money or politics while one fitted This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter, The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union, The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven. One hundred and forty-six died in the flames On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes--

The witness in a building across the street Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop. And then another. As if he were helping them up To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down, Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers--

Like Hart Crane's Bedlamite, "shrill shirt ballooning." Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks, Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian, To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers To wear among the dusty clattering looms. Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape, The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt. code