Robert Pinsky is
the current United States Poet Laureate. His recent books include The Sounds
of Poetry: A Brief Guide, The Handbook of Heartbreak: 101 Poems of Lost Love
and Sorrow, and The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966 - 1996.
His verse translation of Dante's Inferno won the Los Angeles Times Book
Prize. A professor of graduate writing at Boston University, he is also the
poetry editor of the weekly Internet magazine Slate. 