Poet Robert Pinsky — Springsteen’s ‘voice of the Jersey Shore’ — is naming names

Robert Pinsky heard music in the names of different New Jersey towns called out by the train conductor as he traveled to and from his native Long Branch.

"Little Silver, Hazlet, Perth Amboy, Rahway and Secaucus were stops on the New York and Long Branch Railroad. I don't know much about those places. But the consonants and vowels of their names, chanted by old-school conductors on the way to Penn Station, made a familiar, seductive music," Pinsky wrote in his 2022 memoir Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet.

A name communicates a wealth of information—not just town names but street names and last names. At once, a name says something about a person's identity and pulls in decades of history.

The name Robert Pinsky means the "voice of the Jersey Shore" for Bruce Springsteen.

Watch: Robert Pinsky and Bruce Springsteen at Fairleigh Dickinson University

For former President Bill Clinton, it calls to mind the man he asked to serve as poet laureate an unprecedented three times and who embraced the public service aspect of the position by launching Favorite Poem Project, which invites Americans from a variety of backgrounds to read their favorite poems and describe what they meant to them.

And for Jersey Shore residents, the name Robert Pinsky is a matter of pride: one of the most highly regarded American poets and a kid from a lower-middle-class background in Long Branch who never forgot where he came from.

Proverbs of Limbo: Robert Pinsky's First Poetry Collection in 8 Years

The meaning behind names is a through line from Pinsky's Jersey-centric memoir and Proverbs of Limbo, which came out in June of 2024 and is his first poetry collection in eight years.

"The book of poems, I think, does come from my experience of writing about the New Jersey of my day, and I think it's still true in American life ... the implications of a name," Pinsky said.

The collection opens with the "Poem of Names," in which Pinsky approaches the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, the Civil Rights movement, and the Nixon impeachment hearing through the names and remembrances of individuals impacted by these historical moments. He effortlessly intertwines these with personal moments: a conversation with his grandchildren about death and a question from a student about what motivates him.

The historical is personal in "Poem of Names" and in much of Proverbs of Limbo, and a person can't remove himself or herself from the weight of history.

Pinsky sees his home city of Long Branch in much the same light: a place where the past mingles with the present and a deeply personal family legacy is inextricable from that town's history.

"In a certain kind of place, everything can feel simultaneous," Pinsky wrote in Jersey Breaks. "The blending of different periods in time weaves into the haphazard blending of cultures. ... I grew up inculcated with awe of the past."

Robert Pinsky's Long Branch

Regardless of a reader's familiarity with Pinsky's poetry, the portrait of a struggling resort town and the at-turn humorous, heartbreaking, and all-too-familiar family dynamics at the heart of Jersey Breaks make it a must-read for Jersey Shore residents.

The name Pinsky doesn't just belong to Robert Pinsky, after all. It also belongs to his father, Milford, an optician who built and repaired glasses for Long Branch residents and summer tourists alike. His name was such a known quantity in the city that when he partnered with an optometrist--the professional who conducts eye exams--it was the name "Pinsky" that Milford's partner chose to list first.

The surname also belonged to bootlegger Dave Pinsky, Robert's grandfather. Pinsky vividly details the life of his colorful grandfather, who was indicted in 1929 for operating an illegal distillery in Long Branch that produced thousands of gallons of gin per day. Dave Pinsky didn't go to prison and ultimately became the owner of the Broadway Tavern. The bar, located across from the municipal building, counted police officers and politicians as customers, as well as the jockeys from Monmouth Park.

Pinsky revels in the history of Long Branch as much as he does in his family's. He's eager to recount Winslow Homer's painting Long Branch, New Jersey, to note President Ulysses S. Grant summered there, as did President James Garfield, who was shot before boarding a train from Washington, D.C. and would eventually die there.

Pinsky jokes that he talks too much about his hometown, but his passion for the Garden State and the pearls of Jersey lore he strings alongside tales from his extraordinary life make for a mesmerizing book.

What Robert Pinsky Means by 'Jersey Breaks'

The memoir opens with Pinsky's love of Jerseyana, of intertwining family, history, and the particulars of Shore town life. He was joined at a luncheon by fellow Long Branch native son Rep. Frank Pallone. Pinsky remembers Pallone as a young boy following his brother and mother in matching leopard-spotted bathing suits.

"The congressman's mother was a figure in Long Branch town legend," Pinsky wrote.

So was Pallone's father, an old school police officer "who might catch a thirteen-year-old shoplifting and lock the kid into a cell for a few hours, then let him go with a lecture."

A cop letting a kid off the hook or an unexpected turn that shapes a life is what Pinsky means by "Jersey Breaks."

READ MORE: 3 Famous Writers Born in Long Branch, New Jersey

Pinsky believes growing up in a small, two-bedroom apartment on Rockwell Avenue near Monmouth Avenue was one of his Jersey breaks.

"When it went back to Long Branch High School, it was probably the single thing about me that impressed the kids. It wasn't that I had published books or I had won prizes or I had titles like poet laureate. It was that I grew up on Rockwell. That was a credential that they understood and seemed impressed by," Pinsky said.

Growing up in an ethnically diverse area in the 1940s and 1950s, when Long Branch's reputation as a seaside resort town had faded, shaped the writer he would become.

Another one of those breaks came when Pinsky was a college student at Rutgers University and played in a jazz band. They auditioned to be the weekend band in the cocktail lounge of a German restaurant in Atlantic Highlands. Pinsky said he "stank up the place."

Pinsky's love for jazz would never fade--the musicality in the language of his poetry has remained a defining feature. Nevertheless, that failed audition marked the end of his pursuit of a career as a musician. The event solidified that he had become dedicated to poetry.

(Longtime Jersey Shore residents will recognize that German restaurant in Atlantic Highlands as the Hofbrauhaus, which was demolished in 2009.)

Pinsky's career would see him as the author of a computer game in 1984, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, feted at the White House, a guest star on The Simpsons, translator of a critically acclaimed version of The Inferno of Dante read by every English major in the 1990s and 2000s, a member of a contingent of international poets allowed into North Korea, and the author of 11 poetry collections. He seems humbled by and grateful for his Jersey breaks.

"All of this for da-da da-da, da-da da-da da-da seems so unlikely," Pinsky said, laughing.