"An alternatingly funny and poignant memoir from "our finest living example of [the American civic poet]" (New York Times). In late-1940s Long Branch, an historic but run-down Jersey Shore resort town, in a neighborhood of Italian, Black, and Jewish families, Robert Pinsky began his unlikely journey to becoming a poet. Descended from a bootlegger grandfather, an athletic father, and a rebellious tomboy mother, Pinsky was an unruly but articulate high-school...

"POEMJAZZ treats a voice speaking poetry as having a role like that of a horn: speech with its own poetic melody and rhythm, interacting with what the music is doing. The variations in pitch and cadence are those inherent in the words themselves, as they make their way through the lines: the language true to itself while adapting its rhythms and pitches to counterparts in music. The melodic arcs and contours of the grammar, the patterns of the consonants...

Scholar and host Elisa New travels the country, joining up with distinguished poets, celebrities, and everyday Americans to create a fully immersive experience in hearing, reading, and interpreting twelve American poems.