Robert Pinsky is the author of six books of poetry, four books of
criticism, and two books of translation. His honors include a Pulitzer
Prize nomination, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, an
American Academy of Arts and Letters award, Poetry Magazine's Oscar
Blumenthal prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, and a Guggenheim
Foundation fellowship. He is currently poetry editor of the weekly
Internet magazine Slate and teaches at Boston University. In 1997
Pinsky was named the United States Poet Laureate and Consultant in
Poetry to the Library of Congress. He lives in Newton Corner,
Massachusetts.
New Jersey may be the most American state. It has the most different things in it, urban and rural, and the most ethnicities, so you have a rich, cultural mix.