From the University of North Carolina at Charlotte's 1971 yearbook.

Milestone Monday: Robert Pinsky’s Birthday!

Today we celebrate the poet Robert Pinsky, who was born in Long Branch, New Jersey on October 20th, 1940. Pinsky has served as U.S. Poet Laureate three times, and has taught in the graduate writing program at Boston University since 1989.

The images are taken from two fine press editions of Pinsky’s work. The first, ABC, a brief and subtle abecedarian poem, was designed and printed in a limited edition of ten by Caryl Seidenberg of the Vixen Press in Winnetka, IL in 2003. Also by Seidenberg and Vixen Press is 1998’s The Rhyme of Reb Nachman, printed in an edition of 125. In her colophon to the latter text, Seidenberg explains that the book is “set in 16 point Eusebius, lightly spiced with Andromaque,” with Arches Cover paper, and handmade Nepalese Lokta endpapers. The Campbell-Logan Bindery bound the edition.

In an author’s note, Pinsky divulges that he invented Reb Nachman in order to impress two fellow poets, Gail Mazur and Lloyd Schwartz, and suggests that the poem is therefore, “is a kind of translation with no original.”

See other beautiful artist books of Robert Pinsky’s poetry.

Hear Robert Pinsky describe his process.

Watch Caryl Seidenberg discuss printing.

See more Milestone Monday posts!

--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

After eleven on Holy Saturday, I’m in bed, reading. A book about witches; women burning. Women burning while I am bleeding. Sloughing the unborn from my cunt; craving chocolate. Thinking of Christ. Bloody hands, feet, nailed to the cross. His fifth wound, lance-stab to confirm death. Sacred gash which birthed church. Doubting Thomas later stuck a finger in. Easter tomorrow. We celebrate by hunting eggs. My body does its monthly abortive egg drop, bloody thing, nothing like faberge. Not pastel-dyed hid in plastic grass for kiddies to find. Outside a coyote howls, a perfect piercing note. Mate replies. Holy canid communion. Holy, this: I am thinking of women, burning. Thinking of Jesus. Witch-man. Water to wine, walking just so across a sea. Healed the sick. They did kill him for it. And all those women, bodies kindling. Howling in the fires their innocence from lewdness, devil-lust. Some didn’t deny the magic of which they were accused. Jesus loved Mary Magdalene, woman of ill repute. He hung naked on that cross, atop the hill on Calvary. O, they will always hate the disrupters, find punishments fit for anyone caught. Women, queers, witches. Saints and Magdalenes—

Refuse to go down easy. Race like rabbits running fleetfoot through the burning fields. Resurrecting ourselves. No contrition, no sorry on our lips. What was done, those tortures, can’t be erased. Can’t be undone. They will invent new violences. But we wield scar-armor; wield lance and dagger and X-acto slashed gashes. Holy. Yes, they burn, ban, deport. Don’t yield. Not to those frightened zealots who’ve never had to bleed.

—Jessie Lynn McMains, NaPoWriMo 2026 (Day 4)

Physical Therapy Franny Choi   Ask, first, what your smallest body parts require to sing again: coconut oil for your hair’s dry ends, camphor for the earlobes, rosehip kneaded into fingertips with fingertips. Grapeseed will feed most hungers of the skin. But if even your bones cry January, dip your sharpest knife in a jar of raw honey. Lather it on your thighs, making circles, making certain not to confuse this ache for that other, the one that keeps pulling you to the earth, the one question you still can’t say out loud. Recite instead the names of trees: sumac, sweet birch, slippery elm. Take your palm to the wild place under your chin and count: vein, artery, chokecherry, weeping willow, until your xacto knife pulse slows, holds. Let your mouth fill with gold, almonds, zinneas. Then: soften.

--

In an abecedarian poem, each line begins with successive letters of the alphabet.

Also: + VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God, Mary Karr + Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell, Marty McConnell + Heartbeats, Melvin Dixon

More by Franny Choi: + Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness + The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

Today in:

A streetlight just turned on; there’re trees

Blocking the sunset out my window, a

Crisp and clean gradient that

Declares fall is on its way soon. it's

Ever creeping closer like the end and I

Feel like I'm on the brink of something

Grand and worth staying present for but

Hey this could be the last day you breathe.

I don't want to cut off before the phrase ends.

Just because it decrescendos doesn't mean

Kill the music. my legs and my arms are

Letting go of my childhood strength, and

My joints and my bones are icing over.

Now I'm at mezzo piano when

Once I was full forte, accented.

Perhaps this is my sunset, solo so soon

Quieted by decreased lung capacity.

Really I just want to not struggle with

Something as poetic as an early demise:

Take my legs but not yet, not yet.

Unforgettable were those days climbing so

Very high in a pine tree and swinging,

Wings spread wide as the sky I could touch.

Xylem breaks down over time and

You see I'm made of sycamore, my

cafuné (Brazilian Portuguese) [ka.fuˈnɛ] the act of caressing or tenderly running fingers through a loved one's hair.