September Artful Thursday: Robert Pinsky Talk & Book Launch @MFAH – Saying and Seeing: To Recall and to Envision

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents its September Artful Thursday program Robert Pinsky Talk & Book Launch @MFAH – Saying and Seeing: To Recall and to Envision.

Robert Pinsky, who served as U.S. poet laureate from 1997 to 2000, comes to the MFAH for a talk that coincides with the launch of ARTlines2 Anthology: Art Becomes Poetry.

The Museum collaborates with Public Poetry on the ARTlines ekphrastic poetry competition. For Artlines2 in 2014, writers nationwide were invited to submit poems about selected works of art on view at the MFAH, with the winners and finalists to be published in ARTlines2 Anthology.

Pinsky was among the distinguished panel of judges. Tonight’s talk is followed by a book signing with Pinsky, contributing poets, and other judges.

Of his Artful Thursday presentation, Pinsky writes:

We sometimes celebrate a poem or a picture by saying it is memorable. In the old mythology, the mother of the muses is Memory.

Both of the two arts that have been brought together, imaginatively, in Houston have included the humble purpose of assisting memory: a rhyme or a phrase, like a sketch or photograph, can help us remember.

But there is always transformation, willed or unwilled, memory revised or corrected or undermined or improved. Ekphrasis brings that transformation to the foreground as a radiant, manifest reality, impossible to ignore, with infinite variations. The poem is not the picture.

About Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky, , is the only poet to have served three terms as United States Poet Laureate (1997-2000), and is the founder of The Favorite Poem Project , in which thousands of Americans in towns and cities across the county share their favorite poems.

He is the author of nineteen books, his most recent including his Selected Poems and the anthology Singing School: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters.

Pinsky’s translation of The Inferno of Dante Alighieri received the Los Angeles Times Book Award in poetry. His volume of poetry The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 was a Pulitzer Prize nominee and received the Lenore Marshall Award.

Recently, he has been recording poetry with jazz musicians and Circumstantial Productions released his CD PoemJazz, with Grammy-winning pianist Laurence Hobgood. He is the only member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters to have appeared on both The Simpsons and The Colbert Report!

Public Poetry is bringing US Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky to Houston for three events, all free and open to the public.

• On Tuesday Sept. 8,  he will be reading at UH-Downtown @ 5:30.
• On Wednesday, Sept 9, launching The Favorite Poem Project at the Ideson Library, downtown on @ 6:00 PM.
• On Thursday, Sept 10, he will give a talk on ekphrasis at the MFAH, Cullinan Hall in connection with the launch of our ARTlines2 Anthology: Art Becomes Poetry.

About Artful Thursdays
Artful Thursday is a monthly program related to the Museum’s art collections and exhibitions. At lectures and performances, the visual arts cross paths with other disciplines—dance, music, prose, poetry, fashion, film, science, psychology, and more. Each event is followed by a brief Q&A.

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/RobertPinsky