{"id":40802230542,"date":"2022-10-24T11:53:37","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T15:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/?p=40802230542"},"modified":"2022-11-16T15:04:50","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T20:04:50","slug":"long-branch-native-and-former-us-poet-laureate-robert-pinsky-looks-back-at-his-jersey-roots-in-new-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/long-branch-native-and-former-us-poet-laureate-robert-pinsky-looks-back-at-his-jersey-roots-in-new-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Branch Native and Former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky Looks Back at his Jersey Roots in New Book\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Monmouth University Center for the Arts <\/strong>is pleased to welcome former three-term US Poet Laureate and Long Branch, NJ native Robert Pinsky<\/strong> for an evening of conversation in celebration of the release of his memoir\u00a0Jersey Breaks<\/em> on November 10th<\/sup> at 7:30 pm<\/strong> in the Great Hall Auditorium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. Descended from a bootlegger grandfather, an athletic father, and a rebellious tomboy mother, Pinsky was an unruly but articulate high school C student, whose obsession with the rhythms and melodies of speech inspired him to write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his new memoir Jersey Breaks,<\/em> 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\u2019s challenges, such as his mother\u2019s traumatic brain injury, and on his notable public presence, including an unprecedented three terms as United States poet laureate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pinsky moves back and forth in time, narrating his life in crisp, self-deprecating prose. \u201cIf I have a story to tell,\u201d he writes, \u201cit\u2019s how the failures and aspirations of a certain time and place led to poetry.\u201d In the \u201csounds of Hebrew,\u201d Pinsky heard Milton, Blake, and Whitman. He recalls reading stories and poems in the glossy magazines in his optician father\u2019s waiting room as well as the \u201cexact moment when I became a writer,\u201d thanks to Through the Looking Glass. As an \u201cambitious, pseudointellectual freshman\u201d at Rutgers University, he encountered and enjoyed Ulysses and the poetry of William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, and Allen Ginsberg. Pinsky confesses that his way of writing a poem stems from getting a \u201ctune in my head\u2026like noodling at the piano,\u201d and his approach fostered his popular Favorite Poem Project, which combined the \u201cappeal of gossip with the appeal of art.\u201d Candid, engaging, and wry, Jersey Breaks<\/em> offers an intimate self-portrait and a unique poetic understanding of American culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Called, “<\/strong>Truly the voice of the Jersey Shore” by Bruce Springsteen, Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of which are collections of his poetry. His published work also includes critically acclaimed translations, Dante Alighieri’s Inferno<\/em> and The Separate Notebooks<\/em> by Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz. He teaches at Boston University.

The evening will be moderated by the Dean of The Wayne D. McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences, David Hamilton Golland, Ph.D.<\/strong> The event is free and open to the public and copies of Jersey Breaks<\/em> will be for sale. For more information about the event or to RSVP visit www.monmouth.edu\/MCA<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monmouth University Center for the Arts is pleased to welcome former three-term US Poet Laureate and Long Branch, NJ native Robert Pinsky for an evening of conversation in celebration of the release of his memoir Jersey Breaks on November 10th at 7:30 pm in the Great Hall Auditorium. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":40802230548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802230542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-center-for-the-arts"],"subheadline":"Free reading & book signing on Nov. 10 at Monmouth U.","youtube":"","thumbnail":"","gallery":null,"featured_img":"\"\"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802230542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802230542"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802230542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802230561,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802230542\/revisions\/40802230561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40802230548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802230542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802230542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/mca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802230542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}