U.S poet laureate to speak at Fairfield U.

FAIRFIELD, CONN – Robert Pinsky read the dictionary and daydreamed about the sounds of words as a child, later finding inspiration in the work of Yeats, Ginsberg, Frost and Eliot.

On Wednesday, Feb. 27, Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2000, will speak at Fairfield University’s Open VISIONS Forum. “Keeping the Humanities Alive Via Poetry” is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.

Pinsky is poetry editor of the online journal “Slate”, a regular contributor to “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS and a professor in the graduate writing program at Boston University. After an acclaimed writing and teaching career of 30 years, he joined the company of Robert Penn Warren, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz and others when he was named the nation’s poet laureate in 1997.

Known as “the people’s poet,” Pinsky combines the esoteric with the everyday in his poetry, often trying to mimic in his writing the rhythm of the saxophone, an instrument he plays.

Pinsky’s honors also include an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award, Poetry magazine’s Oscar Blumenthal prize, the William Carlos Williams Award and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Paris Review and the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

The Pinsky lecture is co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute and the College of Arts and Sciences.