'Near the heart of poetry'

 

“Poetry is not easy. Or should I say, real poetry is not easy.” – Robert Pinsky

Born in New Jersey in October of 1940, Pinsky is the United States’ first three-term Poet Laureate.  A “Distinguished” Professor of English at Boston University, he’s authored more than 20 books of poetry including this year’s Proverbs of Limbo: Poems. 

 

In addition to his poetic works, he’s written the highly regarded The Sounds of Poetry, A Brief Guide.   While Pinsky’s poems are not available for reprinting, you can read some or listen to him reading them at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/search?query=Robert%20Pinsky&page=5

 

A musician as well as a writer, Pinsky once noted: “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 imagination, to repeat the physical experience of that sentence. That craving, emotional and intellectual but beginning in the body with a certain gesture of sound, is near the heart of poetry.”