Jersey breaks : becoming an American poet / Robert Pinsky.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pinsky, Robert, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pinsky, Robert.

Poets, American--20th century--Biography.

Poets, American.

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xiii, 236 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2022]

Summary:

"An alternatingly funny and poignant memoir from "our finest living example of [the American civic poet]" (New York Times). In late-1940s Long Branch, an 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. 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. Jersey Breaks offers a candid self-portrait and, underlying Pinsky's notable public presence and unprecedented three terms as poet laureate of the United States, a unique poetic understanding of American culture"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: I. A Provincial Sense Of Time

II. Rockwell

III. Little Egypt

IV. Change Trains At Summit

V. The Aristocratic Principle

VI. Partnership

VII. Naming Names

VIII. Ironfoot, Ruveyn And Folkenflik

IX. Brave, Clean And Reverent

X. Idolatry

XI. Teacher

XII. Music

XIII. Moving Around

XIV. A Hat Like That

XV. Magic Mountain

XVI. Hyper-Adventures

XVII. Infernal

XVIII. All Of The Above

XIX. "He Does Not Come To Coo"

XX. American Signs

XXI. Hergesheimer

XXII. And Another Thing

XXIII. The Favorite Poem Project

XXIV. Immigrant Paths.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9780393882049

0393882047

OCLC:

1294289228