Longfellow Summer Arts Festival: Robert Pinsky

Join us on the east lawn of the Longfellow House for an afternoon with Robert Pinsky! It’s the first event in our 2025-26 We (too) The People series.

Robert Pinsky’s most recent book of poems is Proverbs of Limbo. A PoemJazz album of the same title is available on Spotify and Apple Music. His autobiographical prose book is Jersey Breaks.

Robert’s honors include the Korean Manhae Award, the Italian Premio Capri, and the Harold Washington Award from the City of Chicago. He has honorary degrees from institutions including Stanford University, The New School, and the University of Michigan.

As United States Poet Laureate, he founded the Favorite Poem Project, with brief videos in which thousands of American readers, of varying backgrounds, ages, and regions, read poems they admire by writers such as Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, Frank O’Hara, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Glück, Siegfried Sassoon.

If you’re not able to attend in person, you can watch online! Register here.

The Longfellow Summer Arts Festival brings music, poetry, and community to the East Lawn of the Longfellow House on Sunday afternoons through the summer. All events are free and open to the public. For directions, parking, and accessibility information, see the Festival page.

In the event of inclement weather, the reading will be held indoors.