Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Former three-time U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky returns to the Library for a discussion of his poetry and criticism with Ron Charles, who writes about books on Substack. A book signing will follow.
Robert Pinsky was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, in 1940. His poetry collections include "Sadness and Happiness" (1975), "The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996" (1996), "At the Foundling Hospital" (2016) and "Proverbs of Limbo" (2024). In addition to editing five anthologies, Pinsky has published several books of prose, translations of Dante and Czesław Miłosz, and the computerized novel "Mindwheel" (1985).
His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and Stanford University, and he has received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the William Carlos Williams Award and the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America and the Oscar Blumenthal Prize from Poetry magazine.
From 1997-2000, Pinsky served as the U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and created the Favorite Poem Project to document, promote and celebrate poetry's place in American culture. A former Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets and a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Pinsky is professor emeritus at Boston University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
For transcript and more information, visit loc.gov/item/video-11721
Former three-time U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky returns to the Library for a discussion of his poetry and criticism with Ron Charles, who writes about books on Substack. A book signing will follow.
Robert Pinsky was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, in 1940. His poetry collections include "Sadness and Happiness" (1975), "The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996" (1996), "At the Foundling Hospital" (2016) and "Proverbs of Limbo" (2024). In addition to editing five anthologies, Pinsky has published several books of prose, translations of Dante and Czesław Miłosz, and the computerized novel "Mindwheel" (1985).
His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and Stanford University, and he has received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the William Carlos Williams Award and the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America and the Oscar Blumenthal Prize from Poetry magazine.
From 1997-2000, Pinsky served as the U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and created the Favorite Poem Project to document, promote and celebrate poetry's place in American culture. A former Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets and a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Pinsky is professor emeritus at Boston University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
For transcript and more information, visit loc.gov/item/video-11721
