BRATTLEBORO — On Friday, June 9, at 5 p.m., the Brattleboro Literary Festival's monthly Literary Cocktail Hour series presents former three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky talking about his new book, Jersey Breaks. Register for this online event at bit.ly/LitCocktail31.
In late-1940s Long Branch, a historic but run-down Jersey Shore resort town, in a neighborhood of Italian, Black, and Jewish families, Robert Pinsky began his unlikely journey to becoming a poet.
According to Pinsky, he descended from a bootlegger grandfather, an athletic father, and a rebellious tomboy mother. Unruly but articulate, he was a C student in high school, and his obsession with the rhythms and melodies of speech inspired him to write.
Pinsky traces the roots of his poetry, with its “wide and fearless range,” back to the voices of his neighborhood, to music and a distinctly American tradition of improvisation, with influences including Mark Twain and Ray Charles, Marianne Moore and Mel Brooks, Emily Dickinson and Sid Caesar, Dante Alighieri and the Orthodox Jewish liturgy.
He reflects on how writing poetry helped him make sense of life's challenges, such as his mother's traumatic brain injury, and on his notable public presence. “Candid, engaging, and wry, Jersey Breaks offers an intimate self-portrait and a unique poetic understanding of American culture,” say organizers. Pinsky will be in conversation with former Vermont Poet Laureate Chard deNiord.
Pinsky is the author of numerous books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Figured Wheel, and prose, including The Sounds of Poetry. He founded the Favorite Poem Project. He has edited several anthologies, most recently The Book of Poetry for Hard Times.
His honors include the PEN/Voelcker Award, the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Lenore Marshall Prize, Italy's Premio Capri, the Korean Manhae Award, and the Harold Washington Award from the City of Chicago and many others, according to his website. He teaches at Boston University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Chard deNiord is co-founder of the New England College MFA program in poetry. He is the author of the poetry collections Asleep in the Fire, Sharp Golden Thorn, Night Mowing, The Double Truth, and Interstate. His book Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs is a collection of interviews with American poets. His second collection of interviews with poets is I Would Lie to You if I Could: Interviews with Ten American Poets. He served as Vermont Poet Laureate from 2016 to 2019, and he lives in Westminster West with his wife, Liz.