From an essay on early reading by Robert Pinsky:My favorite reading for many years was the "Alice" books. The sentences had the same somber, drugged conviction as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, an...
Jazz and poetry both involve a structure that may be familiar and to some extent predictable. And then, you try to create as much surprise and spontaneity and feeling and variation while respecting th...
I delight sometimes in saying to - as when I'm a teacher, I love saying, 'This is really important, so don't write it down.' To me, what you retain is a very important filter.
For an American, there's no automatic place where people love the art of poetry. There's not a social class that considers poetry its property the way in some countries there's a snob value to the art...
I think art is not an ornament or refinement at the fringes of human intelligence, I think it's at the center. It's at the core.
I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in tim...
A reflection on Robert LowellRobert Lowell knew I was not one of his devotees. I attended his famous office hours salon only a few times. Life Studies was not a book of central importance for me, thou...
The last thing a young artist should do in poetry or any other field is think about what's in style, what's current, what are the trends. Think instead of what you like to read, what do you admire, wh...
This is one of the great human mysteries: why do works of art about bad things such as loss and deprivation make us feel good?
A sentence is like a tune. A memorable sentence gives its emotion a melodic shape. You want to hear it again, say it—in a way, to hum it to yourself. You desire, if only in the sound studio of your im...
