“In a political culture of managed spectacles and passive spectators, poetry appears as a rift, a peculiar lapse, in the prevailing mode,” wrote Adrienne Rich in her 1993 essay “Someone is Writing a Poem.” Later, in the same essay, she tried to explain just how: “In the wash of poetry the old, beaten, worn stones…
Jill Bialosky, the poet, memoirist, novelist and executive editor at W.W. Norton & Company recently accused of plagiarism in her new memoir “Poetry Will Save Your Life,” has a long list of powerful supporters. Former poets laureate Robert Pinsky and Louise Glück, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jennifer Egan, and some 70-odd other authors signed a Letter…
Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s poem “Exile and Lightning” made an impact when he read it at a PEN America Writers Resist event in January. In front of a crowd that included cultural figures like Masha Gessen, Art Spiegelman, and Amy Goodman, Pinsky issued a striking reflection on the contemporary urgency of historic thought. “Now,…
Philip Roth, Stephen Sondheim, Art Spiegelman and a number of other Jewish luminaries have lent their names to an open letter beseeching President Trump to reconsider restricting entry to the country for refugees from around the world and immigrants from a group of Muslim-majority countries. The letter, signed by 65 writers and artists and written…
On Tuesday, the National Book Critics Circle revealed the finalists for its 2016 book awards. Those finalists include Michael Chabon’s “Moonglow” in fiction, former United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s “At The Foundling Hospital” in poetry, Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” and Jenny…
● Singing School: Learning To Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying With the Masters By Robert Pinsky W.W. Norton & Company, 240 page, $25.95 In approaching Robert Pinsky’s new book on how to write poetry, unsuspecting students may be eager for trade secrets, but it will shortly dawn on them that Pinsky has a different…
Today, in honor of National Poetry Month, The Arty Semite is featuring “Samurai Song” by Robert Pinsky. In the spirit of Passover, one can read “Samurai Song” as a kind of inverse “Dayenu.” It is often asked of the latter text, that if God had not given us the Sabbath, the Torah, or brought us…
Each Thursday, The Arty Semite features excerpts and reviews of the best contemporary Jewish poetry. This week, Rodger Kamenetz introduces “Glass” by Robert Pinsky. This piece originally appeared on October 5, 2001, as part of the Forward’s Psalm 151 series. It is being published here online for the first time. Robert Pinsky, poet and translator,…
