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An underestimated element in poetry, that reading aloud makes clear, is the pause. I mean especially the force of a pause or a couple of pauses close together, contrasted with a longer unit of grammar.

Robert Pinsky

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Robert Pinsky
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: October 20
Librarian
Literary Critic
Poet
Translator
Writer
Long Branch
New Jersey
Clear
Units
Reading
Element
Contrasted
Force
Elements
Underestimated
Makes
Close
Aloud
Together
Poetry
Unit
Mean
Couple
Pause
Especially
Pauses
Longer
Grammar

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To talk about the reality of life here and the work that you do here at the university.
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I have always been thinking about the sounds and shades and aromas of words - fitting them together or disrupting their customary march - more or less every second of my life, waking and sleeping.
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Poetic language is singularly appropriate for recounting the life of the king who is traditionally accepted as the author of the poetic psalms, some of which are included in the narrative.
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Art will not solve your problems. It will not enable you to live merrily.
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Deciding to remember, and what to remember, is how we decide who we are.
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In the particular presence of memorable language we can find a reminder of our ability to know and retain knowledge itself: the brightness wherein all things come to see.
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Whatever makes a child want to glue macaroni on a paper plate and paint the assemblage and see it on the refrigerator - that has always been strong in me.
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Poetry's medium is not merely light as air, it is air: vital and deep as ordinary breath.
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