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.
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'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.
