Robert Hass

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Infobox writer Robert L. Hass (born March 1, 1941) is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997.<ref name="poets.org">Template:Cite web</ref> He won the 2007 National Book Award<ref name="nba2007"> "National Book Awards – 2007". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-04-08.
(With acceptance speech, interview, and other materials; and essay by Evie Shockley from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)</ref> and shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry<ref name="pulitzer">"Fiction". Past winners & finalists by category. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-04-08.</ref> for the collection Time and Materials: Poems 1997–2005.<ref name="Poetic Justice - Robert Hass">Goldman, Justin. "Poetic Justice – Robert Hass" Diablo Magazine, July 2008.</ref> In 2014 he was awarded the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.<ref name=Poetryfoundation.org>Template:Cite web</ref>

Life

Hass's works are well known for their West Coast subjects and attitudes. He was born in San Francisco and grew up in San Rafael.<ref name="Poetic Justice - Robert Hass"/> He grew up with an alcoholic mother, a major topic in the 1996 poem collection Sun Under Wood. His older brother encouraged him to dedicate himself to his writing. Awestruck by Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg, among others in the 1950s Bay Area poetry scene, Hass entertained the idea of becoming a beatnik. He graduated from Marin Catholic High School in 1958. When the area became influenced by East Asian literary techniques, such as haiku, Hass took many of these influences up in his poetry. He has been hailed as "a lyrical virtuoso who is able to turn even cooking recipes into poetry".<ref>Andreas Dorschel, 'Zwischen Wein und Wüste', in: Süddeutsche Zeitung Nr. 260 (11. November 2005), p. 16.</ref>

Hass is married to the poet and antiwar activist Brenda Hillman, who is a professor at Saint Mary's College of California.<ref name="Poetic Justice - Robert Hass"/>

Career

Hass graduated from Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California in 1963, and received his MA and Ph.D. in English from Stanford University in 1965 and 1971 respectively.<ref name="poets.org"/>

From 1995 to 1997, during Hass's two terms as the US Poet Laureate (Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress), he became a champion of literacy, poetry, and ecological awareness. He criss-crossed the country lecturing in places as diverse as corporate boardrooms and for civic groups, or as he has said, "places where poets don't go." After his self-described "act of citizenship," he wrote a weekly column on poetry in The Washington Post until 2000. He serves as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, was a trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize (now trustee emeritus), and works actively for literacy and the environment.

As major influences on his poetry, Hass cites Beat poet Lew Welch, and has praised the slogan "Raid Kills Bugs Dead," which Welch crafted while working for an advertising firm.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Poetry

Hass's poems tend to vary in structure as he alternates between prose-like blocks and free verse. His poems have been said to have a stylistic clarity, seen in his simple, clear language and precise imagery. His collection Praise features themes of seasons, nature, location, and transformation, with a running motif of blackberries. Poet Stanley Kunitz said of Hass's work, "Reading a poem by Robert Hass is like stepping into the ocean when the temperature of the water is not much different from that of the air. You scarcely know, until you feel the undertow tug at you, that you have entered into another element."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The January 2017 "Gift Horse" episode<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> of the TV series Madam Secretary alludes to Hass. At a presidential inauguration, the poet laureate character ("Roland Hobbs") recites a poem that describes "the privilege of being", an allusion to Hass's 1999 poem of that title.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Activism

Hass has actively promoted ecoliteracy. In 1995 he began working with writer and environmentalist Pamela Michael on a program that encourages "children to make art and poetry about their watersheds" and fosters interdisciplinary environmental education.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In April 1996, when he was poet laureate, he organized a six-day conference at the Library of Congress that brought together American nature writers to celebrate writing, the natural world, and community.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On November 9, 2011, while Hass was participating in an Occupy movement demonstration at UC Berkeley called Occupy Cal, a police officer hit him in the ribs with a baton.<ref name=hassnyt>Template:Cite news</ref>

Awards and honors

Literary awards

Year	Work	Award	Category	Result	Ref
1972	Field Guide	Yale Series of Younger Poets	—	Template:Won
1979	Praise	William Carlos Williams Award	—	Template:Won
1984	Twentieth Century Pleasures	National Book Critics Circle Award	Criticism	Template:Won
1989	Human Wishes	National Book Critics Circle Award	Poetry	Template:Sho
	Sun Under Wood	National Book Award	Poetry	Template:Sho
1996		National Book Critics Circle Award	Poetry	Template:Won
2007	Time and Materials	National Book Award	Poetry	Template:Won<ref name="nba2007" />
2008		Pulitzer Prize	Poetry	Template:Won<ref name="pulitzer" />
2013	What Light Can Do	PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay	—	Template:Won<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
2018	A Little Book on Form: An Exploration into the Formal Imagination of Poetry	Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism	—	Template:Won

Honors

• The Frost Place poet in residence (1978)
• MacArthur Fellowship, 1984
• Manhae Prize co-winner, 2009
• Wallace Stevens Award, 2014

Published works

Poetry

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Criticism

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Contributions

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Translations

• The Separate Notebooks, Czesław Miłosz (translated by Robert Hass and Robert Pinsky with the author and Renata Gorczynski), New York: Ecco Press, 1984, Template:ISBN
• Unattainable Earth, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), New York: Ecco Press, 1986, Template:ISBN
• Provinces, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1991, Template:ISBN
• The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa, Bashō Matsuo, Buson Yosano, Issa Kobayashi (edited with verse translation by Robert Hass), Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1994, Template:ISBN
• Facing the River: new poems, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1995, Template:ISBN
• Road-Side Dog, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998, Template:ISBN
• Treatise on Poetry, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), New York: Ecco Press, 2001, Template:ISBN
• Second Space: new poems, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), New York: Ecco Press, 2004, Template:ISBN
• The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, includes five translations by Robert Hass, San Francisco: City Lights 2004, Template:ISBN

External links

• Poems by Robert Hass and biography at PoetryFoundation.org
• Hass's Academy of American Poets page
• "Robert Hass: Online Interviews", Sarah Pollock, Modern American Poetry
• Hass pays tribute to Griffin Trust Lifetime Recognition Award recipient Robin Blaser (audio clip)
• Two poems (Meditations at Lagunitas and Misery and Splendor) from the Robert Hass page, courtesy of UIUC.
• "The Bard of Berkeley," Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2009
• Template:Usurped, review of The Apple Trees at Olema in the Oxonian Review
• 'The Temptations of Art', review of "The Apple Trees at Olema" in The New Republic