U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky To Speak At Fall Convocation

Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky will be the keynote speaker at Ranney School’s annual Upper School Convocation on Thursday, October 15 at 10:00 a.m. in Panther Hall.

Mr. Pinsky, who originally hails from Long Branch, New Jersey, is an award-winning poet, essayist, literary critic and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as the United States Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. During this time, he became a public ambassador for poetry, founding the Favorite Poem Project, a program dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging thousands of Americans from varying backgrounds to share their favorite poems.

Mr. Pinsky’s poetry has garnered literary praise with comparisons to fellow poet-critics such as T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and Matthew Arnold. A prolific author, his recent anthology, An Invitation to Poetry, comes with a DVD featuring 27 of the Favorite Poem Project’s video segments, as seen on PBS. This past April, Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud debuted with a CD. Other collections of his poetry include Gulf Music: Poems (2007); Jersey Rain (2000); and The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 (1996) which captured the 1997 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and was a Pulitzer Prize nominee.

The recipient of numerous honors including the PEN/Voelcker Award, the William Carlos Williams Prize, and the 2008 Theodore M. Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, Mr. Pinsky is currently a professor in the graduate writing program at Boston University and the poetry editor of the online magazine Slate.

The Fall Convocation began as a series of programs in 2003 and explores issues of leadership, service and ethics from varying perspectives. This year’s theme is “Leadership and Literature.” Past speakers have included award-winning author and New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, Steve McCurry, National Geographic journalist, and Frank Deford, Sports Illustrated author and commentator on National Public Radio.

Highlighting this year’s convocation will be the premiere of Mr. Pinsky’s poem Jersey Rain set to music and sung by the Ranney Upper School Chorus. The choral arrangement is a collaboration between Mr. Pinsky and internationally renowned composer Ezra Laderman.

Schedule of Events:

October 15, 2009

10:00 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. Convocation Ceremony, Panther Hall

12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Lunch and Q&A with Upper School students, Searle Library

2:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. Meet with Lower & Middle School Students, Panther Hall