Реферат: Online Interviews With Robert Pinsky Essay Research

most stood out in your mind?

PINSKY: Probably the only anonymous one in

the anthology (Americans’ Favorite Poems), about Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem

"Eros Turannos."

FEED: Right. "What fated her to

choose him;/She meets in his engaging mask/All reasons to refuse him…" Like most

of Robinson’s work, that poem is haunting, tragic. What explanation did the anonymous

person give for why he or she submitted it?

PINSKY: The letter is quoted on page 235

of "Americans’ Favorite Poems."

FEED: A poetry cliff-hanger! All right.

So, do you have a favorite poem? Was there a poem that you read that made you say to

yourself, "Okay, I’m becoming a poet"?

PINSKY: The list is long, perhaps

beginning with and certainly including "Sailing to Byzantium," which I typed up

and hung on the wall when I was 17 years old.

FEED: Who turned you on to "Sailing

to Byzantium"? What was it about that poem that captured your imagination?

PINSKY: My freshman English teacher Paul

Fussell first showed it to me, I think. A great teacher. I may have been attracted by the

poem’s spiritual power, entirely apart from, and as it seemed to me, above any religion

such as Christianity or Judaism. The religion of art, I suppose.

FEED: How important is the oral tradition

to you in writing poems? Telling stories used to be a popular entertainment because there

weren’t many other options. But television, and, more recently, the internet, are much

easier forms of entertainment than storytelling. Do you think poets growing up today are

missing out to some extent because they are not verbally sharing stories with their elders

and peers?

PINSKY: I don’t think the appetite for TV