Robert Pinsky — Master Poet of Long Branch
Poet of the City …
Order — HERE.
Long Branch native Dr. Robert Pinsky — a three-term Poet Laureate of the United States, distinguished Professor of English, and author of 20 books — has written another, Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022; $26.95). The Pinsky family story is a fascinating Long Branch tale.
Dr. Pinsky’s compact memoir — in a tempting 232 pages — reflects on his start in a city he calls “inherently poetic” even while holding “confused as can be” feelings about his birthplace today. With this Long Branch “mismosh” breeding, Pinsky would rise to great heights in the world of literature.
The duty of the “Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress” — the official title — is to raise national awareness and appreciation for reading and writing of poetry. The position was created in 1937 and Dr. Pinksy is the only three-termer. That devotion to his art yielded results: “No other living American poet has done so much to put poetry before the public eye,” according to the New York Times Sunday Book Review on his tenure (from 1997-2000).
“Genuine poetry can communicate before it’s understood.”
—T. S. Eliot
Even with his national reach Long Branch remains his literary lodestar. “In the late 1940s, 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,” according to the book’s cover-jacket. The front cover shows a 1970s image of the famed Long Branch boardwalk. “All of my poems are about Long Branch — often, only I can tell,” Dr. Pinsky explained during a March 2013 reading at Monmouth University in WLB.
Robert Pinsky, PhD.
Born in the city in October 1940, Pinsky graduated from Long Branch High School in 1958 and Rutgers University (receiving the Jacob Cooper Logic prize). He went on to earn a doctorate from Stanford University in 1966. Husband to a psychotherapist and father of three children, the Cambridge, Mass. resident is currently Professor of English and creative writing in Boston University’s graduate school program.
For more information on Dr. Pinsky’s amazing career, writings and upcoming appearances visit his website — HERE.
Surf’s Up — Robert Pinsky (l) with his brother Richard (r) at a Long Branch beach, 1968.
Shore Sonneteer — A reflective Dr. Pinsky on the city boardwalk, March 2013. He has great admiration for the “mixed” citizenry of Long Branch — MORE INFO.
Poet Laureate Promo — Dr. Pinsky talks about poetry while on public TV, 2000.
Launch Pad — Long Branch High School on Westwood Avenue, 1950s. Dr. Pinsky was among 237 students graduating from the city’s high school in June 1958. That senior class “walked with a quiet air of confidence,” according to the Long Branch Daily Record. Charlotte Vandermark was the top student and went on to study literature in Paris.
Eyes Front — Milford S. Pinsky optician’s office on Third Avenue, 1955. He was the father of famed American poet, Robert Pinsky. Milford started his city eye business in 1935 and later opened branch offices in the Monmouth Shopping Center (1960) and on Broadway (1962). He was accepted into the Guild of Prescription Opticians of America in 1960. His father David operated a city bar, the Broadway Tavern. Born in Brooklyn — David had done some boxing and bootlegging before his death in May 1951.
Ode to Mom & Pop — Sylvia and Milford Pinsky, the parents of Robert Pinsky, 1950s. After meeting at LBHS they wed in June 1938. The couple — both were opticians — lived on Woolley Avenue for many years before moving to Florida in 1973. Sylvia died in July 2012 and Milford passed away in September 2003.
Pinsky Material — A young Robert Pinsky with his parents, 1940s.
• Spring 2017 Boston University Arts & Sciences: Robert Pinsky: America’s Poet — HERE
Other Great Long Branch Literary Figures …
Word’s World — Hotel Scarboro on Ocean Avenue, 1934. Norman Mailer — the Pulitzer-prize winning novelist — was born at the city’s Monmouth Memorial Hospital in January 1923 and lived summers at this family-owned hotel until WW II. The Queen Anne-style hotel spanned nearly 450-feet of prime city oceanfront and offered fine dining and ballroom dancing. It mostly burned in September 1941 — the last of the grand city hotels. Mailer, a Harvard grad, author of a dozen best-selling books and father of nine children, died in 2007. A plaque was dedicated in 2017 near the old hotel honoring the spot where Mailer started his writing career -– MORE HERE.
Gilded Age Gal — Dorothy Parker birthplace marker in West End, 2005. The celebrated writer, citric, wit and founding member of the Algonquin Hotel Round Table, was born in Long Branch in August 1893. She with the “stinging wit and biting pen” died in NYC in July 1967 (a staunch civil rights advocate, she willed her literary estate to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) — MORE INFO.
LBHS to Harvard — Meyer H. Abrams, PhD, awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Barak Obama at the White House, July 2014. A city native and 1930 Long Branch High School valedictorian, Abrams was an Ivy League standout — performing a Harvard University trifecta. After graduating there in 1934 (cum laude), he earned a Master’s Degree in 1937, and then a doctorate in 1940 — all from Harvard. About his Ivy League time, he said: “at Harvard, Long Branch men have gained a reputation for being well prepared. In fact, all of us from Long Branch found ourselves far ahead of those who came from prep schools. This reflects great credit upon our Long Branch teachers.” An authentic intellectual, Dr. Abrams was a much-respected literature teacher and critic and accomplished author (the founding editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature). He was a literature professor at another Ivy League college, Cornell University in New York, for over 65 years. He died in April 2015 at age 102.
