INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT PINSKY

From the website of The New School:

Elise Burchard: How important is the element of sound to your reading and writing process? What do you see or hear? You begin At the Foundling Hospital with “Instrument,”—a poem that evokes the sounds of strings and plucking. How does your experience with music, sound, and translation inspire your work and perhaps this work, in particular?

Robert Pinsky: The sentence-melodies are at the heart of poetry for me. In a way, “writing” isn’t the right word for what I do—composing might be more accurate. I can do it with both hands on the steering wheel, or in the shower. The actual sound of the lines is primary. I may have ideas and feelings for months or years— but they don’t become a poem until I have the tune of a sentence and hear how the sentence-melody might play with and against the lines.

More here.