Robert Pinsky

Professor of English at Boston University and poet laureate of the United States, Pinsky is the author of The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996.

In the world that I inhabit, my little microcosm, two of the greatest clichés that you hear are that writing programs and art schools turn out all these graduates who can't find jobs, and that people don't learn how to write properly anymore.

Well?

I would open up the Boston public school system to the many graduate students and recent graduates in creative writing and art. I would somehow magically eradicate bureaucracy in the educational establishment, and let this tremendous pool of talent and eagerness and delight come together to meet the needs of the Boston Public Schools.

The most hopeful sign that I've seen recently has to do with very young student writers, in junior high school and high school, who are very interested in finding out what's the best in writing, and how they can learn about writing. I think that it's in response to waves of very powerful, very rigorously produced, very well-distributed mass art -- see the Disney movie, get the action figures at Wendy's, have the undershirt.

What I find discouraging is the level of public discourse in general. When public leaders are quoted in the papers, the quality of the language reminds me of the sort of anchorman who specializes in anti-intellectualism, in talking down, in using the common American slang. In the public life of the city, on the one hand, there's a tradition of education and eloquence, part of what naturally follows from having a democracy. And on the other hand, there's an anti-intellectual strain, and one can see that throughout our history.

The Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, whom I consider one of the best writers alive, came through Boston said, "It's a pleasure to be here in Boston, the world capital of poetry." Right now, we have Bill Knott at Emerson, my colleagues Derek Walcott, Rosanna Warren, and Geoffrey Hill at BU, Frank Bidart, Gail Mazur, Lloyd Schwartz, and then all of the students of those people, all of the people attracted to them. Boston has a remarkable level of quality. It's the kind of phenomenon that's often remarked on in retrospect, after it's over.

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