| Robert
Hass is, first of all, a poet of great eloquence, clarity, and
force, whose work is rooted in the landscapes of his native
Northern California. Widely read and much honored, he has brought
the kind of energy in his poetry to his work as an essayist,
translator, and activist on behalf of poetry, literacy, and
the environment. Most notably, in his tenure as United States
Poet Laureate, Robert Hass spent two years battling American
illiteracy, armed with the mantra, “imagination makes
communities.” He crisscrossed the country speaking at
Rotary Club meetings, raising money to organize conferences
such as “Watershed,” which brought together noted
novelists, poets, and storytellers to talk about writing, nature,
and community. For Hass, everything is connected. When he works
to heighten literacy, he is also working to promote awareness
about the environment. Hass believes that natural beauty must
be tended to and that caring for a place means knowing it intimately.
Poets, especially, need to pay constant attention to the interaction
of mind and environment. And when he is talking about poetry
itself, whether Matsuo Basho’s or Elizabeth Bishop’s,
Hass is both spontaneous and original, offering poetic insights
that cannot be found in any textbook.
Robert Hass has published
many books of poetry including Field
Guide, Praise,
Human
Wishes, and Sun
Under Wood, as well as a book of essays on poetry,
Twentieth
Century Pleasures. Hass translated many of the
works of Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, and
he edited Selected Poems: 1954-1986
by Tomas Tranströmer, The
Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa,
and Poet’s Choice: Poems for Everyday Life.
He was the guest editor of the 2001 edition of Best
American Poetry. His essay collection Now
& Then, which includes his Washington Post articles,
was published in April 2007. As US Poet Laureate (1995-1997),
his deep commitment to environmental issues led him to found
River
of Words (ROW), an organization that promotes environmental
and arts education in affiliation with the Library of Congress
Center for the Book. Hass is chairman of ROW’s board of
directors, and judges their annual international environmental
poetry and art contest for youth; he also wrote the introduction
to the poetry collection River
of Words: Young Poets and Artists on the Nature of Things.
He is also a board member of International Rivers Network. Robert
Hass was chosen as Educator of the Year by the North American
Association on Environmental Education and, in 2005, elected
to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. His most recent
book is a collection of poems entitled Time
and Materials (fall 2007), which won both the National
Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Awarded the MacArthur
“Genius” Fellowship, twice the National Book Critics’
Circle Award (in 1984 and 1997), and the Yale Series of Younger
Poets in 1973, Robert Hass is a professor of English at UC Berkeley.
•••
“Hass has significantly
broadened the role of poet laureate to include not only his
love for poetry but also his concern for literacy and his passion
for environmentalism.”
— Los Angeles
Times |
