Pinsky, Robert

BIOGRAPHY

Robert Pinsky, poet and literary critic, was born in 1940 in Long Beach, New Jersey. He studied English at Rutgers University (B.A., 1962) and Stanford University (M.A. and Ph.D., 1967). He has taught at the University of Chicago (1966-67), Wellesley College (1967-1980), and the University of California, Berkeley (1980-present). Since 1979, Pinsky has been poetry editor for The New Republic.

Pinsky has published two volumes of poetry: Sadness And Happiness (1975) and An Explanation of America (1979). His other major works are Landor's Poetry (1968)-a revision of his Ph.D. dissertation, The Situation of Poetry (1977)-a discussion of "this current moment" in modern poetry, and a verse translation of Dante's Inferno (1995). Pinsky's literary criticism also includes articles written for various periodicals and a large number of book reviews for the Los Angeles Times.