Robert Pinsky
does not mince words when it comes to trail mix or the word ‘vacation’
When he was a teenager, Robert Pinsky played tenor saxophone and piano and wanted to pursue a career as a professional musician. Now, said the three-time poet laureate, “my instrument is spoken words. I’m a non-singing vocalist.” Pinsky, 82, will bring his “poem jazz” — complete with a five-piece jazz band (including special guest percussionist Mino Cinelu) — to CitySpace at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 9. His show — part poetry, part jazz concert — coincides with the release of his latest album, “Proverbs of Limbo: PoemJazz III,” which Pinsky called “my most ambitious one yet . . . with the largest band.” The concert will benefit the Favorite Poem Project, which Pinsky, a professor at Boston University, launched in 1997 in an effort to document the role of poetry in the lives of everyday American citizens. He said that people unfamiliar with his work will be surprised by the performance experience. “If I didn’t know about this, I would be suspicious that it would be corny; that it would be some guy reading his profound thoughts while musicians accompany him,” he said. “And I hope that they’ll be surprised to find that it’s music and it’s music with a different feeling and a different meaning with each poem, just as when you go to hear any other kind of vocal music.” We caught up with the Long Branch, N.J., native, who lives in Cambridge with his wife, Ellen — with whom he has three daughters and eight grandchildren — and two cats, to talk about all things travel.
If you could travel anywhere right now, where would you go?
Either Rome, Italy, or Long Branch, New Jersey — two places I feel I am arriving somewhere interesting with every step. Both places, I am never merely on the way somewhere; it is all destination. In one, for eternal reasons, in the other, for personal reasons.
Where was the first place you traveled to after COVID restrictions were lifted?
That first spring I gave a commencement address at Alma College, an excellent small liberal arts college in rural Michigan. There may have been other trips, but I remember that one as just barely postCOVID, because the president of Alma, at the last minute, was quarantined because someone in his family tested positive. Someone read his remarks, and the occasion had that additional community spirit added by a mild emergency. We all conspired to make the occasion good.
Do you prefer booking trips through a travel agent or on your own?
By far the best is when someone invites you somewhere for an occasion — that commencement was an example. If you are at a literary occasion in, say, Cork or Kraków, you have a kind of temporary family as your hosts.
Thoughts on an “unplugged” vacation?
Not a big sacrifice for me to give up video for a number of days. But I will never give up voices and music and words — for those, the more the merrier. I confess: For me, most conversation is more interesting than most sightseeing.
Do you use all of your vacation time or leave some on the table?
One of my great efforts in life has been to escape distinctions like “vacation time” and “work time.”
The most important times rise above any such difference.
What has been your worst vacation experience?
My mother left my father, temporarily, when I was a freshman at Rutgers [University]. She recruited me to drive her from New Jersey to Florida. It would be a vacation for me, she said. The horrible humidity, the horrible relatives we stayed with, the horrible streets and buildings of Miami Beach . . . the very word “vacation” still generates a wisp of horror for me. “Florida,” too — even before the present antiabortion, anti-history, anti-Disney government.
Do you vacation to relax, to learn, or for the adventure of it all?
The previous question reveals to me part of my preference for the word “travel” — snob that I am — over “vacation.” Like many writers, my deepest hope for vacation is that I will get writing done, or at least conceived. Any vacation is good that becomes a setting — or an inspiration — for good work.
What book do you plan on bringing with you to read on your next vacation?
I have three first books of poetry that I’ll be soon taking with me to the Cape. And thanks to my Kindle, if I get bored, I can burrow back into “MobyDick” or “The Invisible Man” or “The Song of the Lark” — for maybe a scene or two, or maybe for the whole thing.
If you could travel with one famous person/celebrity, who would it be?
I’ll choose Mark Twain, the funniest traveler and the most courageous of American writers.
What is the best gift to give a traveler?
Some still call it a mix-tape, but whatever the technology, make the traveler a rich, weightless present of audio — maybe an artful blend of the giver’s tastes in music and the traveler’s? And OK, not all spoken word is corny — or I hope not.
What is your go-to snack for a flight or a road trip?
The kind of trail mix that does not cheat with bits of candy.
What is the coolest souvenir you’ve picked up on a vacation?
The beautiful, intricate mouth bones of an angel shark.
What is your favorite app/website for travel?
The sites of artists, musicians, and writers I admire — living and past.
What has travel taught you?
That I care about comfort. That “The Wizard of Oz” was not made by fools.
What is your best travel tip?
Make your loves — professional, personal, avocational, familial — the basis of your travel. Curiosity is good, but channel it through real connections to an itinerary.