Profile of Robert Hass on Famous Like Me

Robert L. Hass (b. March 1, 1941) is a Californian poet whose works are well-known for their West Coast subject and attitude.

Life

Hass was born in San Francisco. Encouraged to dedicate himself to his writing by his older brother, Hass grew up with an alcoholic mother. (His mother's alcoholism was a major topic in the 1996 poem collection, Sun Under Wood.) Awe-struck by Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg, among others in the 1950s Bay Area poetry scene, Hass entertained the idea of becoming a beatnik. Hass was interested when the area became influenced by East Asian literary techniques, such as haiku.

Career

Hass graduated from St. Mary's College in Moraga, California in 1963, and received his MA and Ph.D. in English from Stanford University in 1965 and 1971 respectively. At Stanford he studied with the poet and critic Yvor Winters, whose ideas influenced his later writing and thinking. Hass taught literature and writing at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1967. From 1971 to 1989, he taught at his alma mater St. Mary's, at which time he transferred to the faculty of University of California, Berkeley.

From 1995-1997, Hass served two terms as the US Poet Laureate (Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress), and became a well-known champion of literacy, poetry, and ecological awareness. He criss-crossed the country lecturing in places as diverse as corporate boardrooms and for civic groups, or as he has said, "places where poets don't go." Since his self-described "act of citizenship," he has written a weekly column on poetry in the Washington Post. He serves as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets, and works actively for literacy and the environment.

Amusingly, Hass says that he admires beat poet Lew Welch's short poem "Raid Kills Bugs Dead". He commented in an archived online chat that "It's to the point." In Hass' opinion, the five most important poets of the last 50 years were Spanish poets Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo, and Polish poets Zbigniew Herbert, Nobel-winner Wislawa Szymborska, and Nobel-winner Czesław Miłosz.

While at Berkeley, Hass has translated the poetry of his fellow Berkeley professor and neighbor Czesław Miłosz as part of a team with Robert Pinsky and Milosz.

Awards

• Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, 1972, for Field Guide
• William Carlos Williams Award, 1979, for Praise
• National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, 1984, for Twentieth Century Pleasures
• National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, 1996, for Sun Under Wood

External Links

• Review of Hass’s Happiness
• Hass's Academy Of American Poets page

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