Jersey Breaks - Becoming an American Poet

In late-1940s Long Branch, a historic but run-down Jersey Shore resort town, in a neighbourhood 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 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 neighbourhood, 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, including an unprecedented three terms as United States poet laureate.

Candid, engaging and wry, Jersey Breaks offers an intimate self-portrait and a unique poetic understanding of American culture.

About the author

Robert Pinsky is the award-winning author of over twenty volumes of poetry. He served as United States poet laureate from 1997 to 2000, during which time he founded the Favorite Poem Project. He teaches at Boston University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Summary

"Truly the voice of the Jersey Shore."—Bruce Springsteen

Product details

• Authors: Robert Pinsky, Robert (Boston University) Pinsky, Pinsky Robert
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 26.03.2024
• EAN: 9781324066071
• ISBN: 978-1-324-06607-1
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 211 mm x 18 mm
• Weight: 207 g
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures, New Jersey, Memoirs, Autobiography: literary, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Jersey Shore, Autobiography: writers, Literary studies: poetry and poets, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural & Regional