While I'm not a substantial fan of Pinksy as a poet, I did enjoy his prose. I'm always interested in the journeys writers take to get where they are, and I especially appreciate the awareness of the greater world around him.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher W. W. Norton & Company for an advanced copy of this autobiography on the making of a poet.

Writers are constantly asked where they get their ideas from. A question that I have always wanted to ask was where did the idea that you were a writer come from? What formed the idea in your head that hmm I could do this. Robert Pinsky's answer might be, I was formed to be a writer. In his new book Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet the three time United States poet laureate discusses his life, his hometown, his unique family, and the things that made him love words and want to create with them.

Robert Pinsky was born in Long Branch, New Jersey a town with its glory days and better day well in the past. His grandfather was a member or a crime ring, bootlegging as a start, his father loved sports, and his mother was a tomboy. The neighborhood was Italian and African American, later Hispanics and Asians would move into the area. Never a great student, Pinsky was a great reader of books and even more of people. Pinsky had an ear, one that turned the voices and sounds of his multiethnic into rhythms that he would play with in his head, forming them and making them something different but he wasn't quite sure what.

Nostalgic, but not for an America that never really was, but for the people and the times that he grew up in. Along with the stories of his upbringing are plenty of sections on the books that he read, the music he listened to and the poets that he discovered. These bits offer different views of what makes a passage work, or what makes a song stay with you, and are quite informative. Also his discussions on working with sight and hearing impaired poets was something I knew little about, but quite enjoyed reading. The writing is quite good, as one would expect with the feeling that you are rumbling along on a train ride with different stations being the past and the conductor is filling in the gaps of what you are seeing. Long Branch in many ways seems as familiar as the small town I grew up in.

Reading about the life of creative people is always interesting, but sometimes a gamble. What if at the end you find an author, or writer or poet is a lot of jerk. Or dull. There is nothing like that in here. No this is a man who considers his past a gift to his talent, and his talent his making people feel something with words. And that is the best thing to share. For poets, aspiring writers and for people who like to read about people liking books, this is the perfect gift.

Smart, honest, and funny. Pinsky isn't afraid to mock himself (or other poets) when it's called for, but he also wants to share what he finds beautiful and important about poetry. Regardless of your attitude towards poetry, you'll find Pinsky's story enlightening and entertaining.

Growing up in a historic, perpetually declining American resort town, with families of year-round Hispanic and South Asian newcomers beginning to arrive, I could see that nearly everybody feels like an outsider, one way or another.
from Jersey Breaks by Robert Pinsky

In 1998 my husband gifted me The Figured Wheel by Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States. But the real impetus for reading Pinsky’s memoir was 1) I am always interested in writers and their stories, and 2) a friend grew up in Long Branch, NJ, and her family married into Pinsky’s family and as a girl she called him ‘cousin’. I could learn about her hometown and about the poet at the same time!

I loved reading about Pinsky’s discovery of literature and poetry, the magic of words. The books that captivated him as a child, the poets in his personal canon. And, I enjoyed his stories about his colorful family, growing up Jewish Orthodox with a grandfather who worked for a famous crime kingpin.

How could the book I loved trick me that way? With so few words? Then, I felt wonder. How was something so real created in such a small space? How had the writer built so much inside my mind? A kind of question I keep trying to answer.
from Jersey Breaks by Robert Pinsky

I understood Pinksy’s marveling on the magic of stories. As a girl, I realized that a book affected my emotions and spurred my imagination. Writers were powerful. I have spent my life trying to understanding how they do it.

“Language-drunk,” he describes himself, drawn from the saxophone to Yeats Sailing to Byzantium, a conversion to poetry; he explains, “But what I try to do in my poems is almost exactly what I wanted to do with the horn.”

The book is far ranging, incorporating Pinksy’s family, teachers, other poets, insight into his own poetry. He explains what drives his poetry, the music of language, the rhythm and drive of words.

One of my favorite chapters addresses the vagaries of fame, how for some, fame is short term and fades while those ignored later rise to acclaim. We are driven to work for excellence, but fame does not always result.

His work with deaf and blind poets was so interesting. The hand sign for poetry is “a fountain-like burst of five fingers opening out from the heart,” he shares.

…Poetry does not merely put particular feeling and ideas into language, it creates an experience that reminds us of something beyond any particular feelings and ideas.
from Jersey Breaks by Robert Pinsky

Granted, I would have gained more from some parts of the book had I read all of his contemporary poets that he discusses. But I found it an interesting read. And, I have taken that gifted book off the shelf to revisit his poems.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through Net Galley. My review is fair and unbiased.