Among the premier poets of our period, it’s hard to think of anyone who has embraced the role of civic poet so wholeheartedly and effectively as Robert Pinsky. In his new nonfiction book, Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet, Pinsky surveys a long and eventful life and career. Along with Allen Ginsberg he singles out as a predecessor William Carlos Williams:
I read the poetry of William Carlos Williams, brimming with the mixed and mixed-up immigrant cultures of New Jersey. . . . Williams, with his Spanish middle name and his English grandmother, made me feel what I still believe is the central issue of American life: the quest for a democratic culture.
Walt Whitman of course looms in the background among the guiding spirits of American poetry. It is no coincidence that Pinsky, Ginsberg, and Williams all came from New Jersey, and Whitman, born on Long Island and raised in Brooklyn, spent the last two decades of his life in the state—all within the orbit of New York City, where so many immigrants have started their journey toward joining and helping to shape the American experiment. A book of Pinsky’s that immediately captured my imagination years ago was An Explanation of America, published in 1979 and couched as an attempt to make sense of our country for his young daughter.
Our poetry has been characterized by its multivocal and inventive verve, its insistence on making its own rules. Here is how Pinsky