Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet [Paperback]

Truly the voice of the Jersey Shore. Bruce Springsteen Translating Dante and Czeslaw Milosz, ascending to the poet laureateship, founding the Favorite Poem Project and even appearing on an episode of Candid, invigorating, personal, and humane.& [ I am an expert at nothing, [Robert] Pinsky writes in Theres undeniable pleasure in Pinskys ruminating.& [His] stories contain&much appealing color and detail. The narratives recursive form, its avoidance of the strictly chronological and the usual memoirists arc, allowed [Pinskys] materials to swirl, settling here and there in felicitous patterns of relation.& [Pinsky] tells his story by way of the sounds which have embodied it. Cesare Pavese wrote in his notebook, The delight of artperceiving that ones own way of life can determine a method of expression. I hear that delight throughout [Pinskys] conviction about poetrys abundant presence and democratic distribution animates [his] memoir.& [E]ntertaining.& His episodic and eclectic song of myself, like Whitmans, contains multitudes. Pinskys anecdotes are as humorous and humble&as they are moving and reflective, and his concerns lie with poetry as much as they do the human condition. Pinsky acolytes and the poetry-inclined alike will savor every bit. [A] judiciously episodic and richly involving memoir.& In musical and transporting prose alive with bemusement, irony, and wonder, Pinsky celebrates the role of poetry in this life and ours. What makes a great poet? Robert Pinsky provides some of the ingredients to his becoming an American original. We know that a language obsession will feed itself in unlikely places. But what places, exactly? Poetry craves particulars. Pinsky gives us Izzy Ashs junkyard, the Tally-Ho Tavern, the magazines in the waiting room of his fathers optical shop, the library at Stanford University. Hes too wise to force cohesion. The result is a lyrical coming-of-age story centered around lyricism itself. In his gripping memlÃÖ