Robert Hass

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Robert L. Hass (born March 1, 1941) is an American poet.

From 1995 to 1997, he was Poet Laureate of the United States.

He received the 2007 National Book Award and was recognized in the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his book Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005.

The Academy of American Poets awarded Wallace Stevens Award in 2014.

Life

Hass' books are well-known for their West Coast subjects and attitudes. He was born in San Francisco and grew up in San Rafael. In the 1996 poetry collection Sun Under Wood, he grew up with an alcoholic mother. His older brother encouraged him to dedicate himself to writing. Hass entertained the possibility of becoming a beatnik after being stunned by Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg, among others in the Bay Area poetry scene in the 1950s. In 1958, he graduated from Marin Catholic High School. Hass took some of these influences up in his poetry as the area was influenced by East Asian literary traditions, such as haiku. He has been described as "a lyrical virtuoso who is able to turn even cooking recipes into poetry."

Hass is married to poet and antiwar activist Brenda Hillman, who is a professor at Saint Mary's College of California.

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Career

Hass earned his MA and Ph.D. in English from Stanford University in 1963 and 1971 respectively, after graduating from Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California. He studied at Stanford with poet and commentator Yvor Winters, whose theories inspired his later writing and thinking. Robert Pinsky, John Matthias, and James McMichael were among his Stanford classmates. Hass taught literature and writing at the University of Buffalo in 1967. He taught at St. Mary's from 1971 to 1989, at which time he moved to the University of California, Berkeley. He has served as a visiting faculty member in the Iowa Writers' Workshop on several occasions, and he served as a panelist at the Workshop's 75th anniversary celebration in June 2011.

He became a promoter of literacy, poetry, and ecological awareness from 1995 to 1997 during Hass' two terms as the US Poet Laureate (Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress). He's crisscrossed the country lecturing in institutions as varied as corporate boardrooms and civic clubs, or, as he said, "places where poets don't go" to "places where poets don't go." In The Washington Post until 2000, he wrote a weekly column on poetry after his self-described "act of citizenship." He served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (now trustee emeritus) and advocated for literacy and the environment.

Hass cites Beat poet Lew Welch and has praised the phrase "Raid Kills Bugs Dead," which Welch conceived while working for an advertising company as one of his major influences on his poetry. In addition, he has named Chilean Pablo Neruda, Peruvian César Vallejo, and Polish poets Zbigniew Herbert, Wiszawa Szymborska, and Czesz Miosz, who he regards as one of the country's five top poets of the last 50 years. Hass spent 15 to 20 years translating Miosz's poetry as part of a Berkeley team with Robert Pinsky and Miosz.

Hass appeared in Wildflowers, the director Melissa Painter's debut film. The Poet is a writer who is dying of an unidentified chronic illness in the film. The script includes excerpts from his poetry, mainly read by Hass and actress Daryl Hannah.

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Awards and honors

• The Frost Place poet in residence (1978)
• 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
• MacArthur Fellowship, 1984
• National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, 1996, for Sun Under Wood
• National Book Award, Poetry, 2007 for Time and Materials
• Pulitzer Prize, Poetry, 2008 (a split award) for Time and Materials
• Manhae Prize co-winner, 2009
• PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, What Light Can Do