Robert Hass
Robert Hass is an acclaimed American poet and educator, born on March 1, 1941, in San Francisco, California. He has made significant contributions to contemporary poetry, known for his intricate poetic technique and deep engagement with environmental and educational issues. After completing his education at St. Mary's College and Stanford University, where he earned a Ph.D., Hass began his teaching career at St. Mary's and later became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His poetry is recognized for its sensitivity and insight, earning him prestigious accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize for "Time and Materials: Poems 1997–2005" in 2008 and the Wallace Stevens Award in 2014.
Hass served as the United States Poet Laureate from 1995 to 1997, during which he focused on promoting literacy and discussed the importance of writing programs. He is also the founder of River of Words, an organization that merges arts education with environmental awareness. In addition to his poetry, he has edited and translated significant works, particularly those of Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz, and has authored essays on poetry and the natural world. Through his body of work, Hass has established himself as a vital voice in literature, emphasizing the connection between art and the environment.
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Subject Terms
Robert Hass
Poet
- Born: March 1, 1941
- Place of Birth: San Francisco, California
Biography
Born in San Francisco, California, on March 1, 1941, Robert Hass became known as a poet whose educative and environmental concerns coupled with an accomplished poetic technique and imagination. His parents were Fred and Helen Dahling Hass; Hass himself was married at a young age to Earlene Leif on September 1, 1962, eventually having three children, Leif, Kristin, and Luke. While Earlene began a career as a psychotherapist, Hass continued his education, graduating from St. Mary’s College of California in 1963 and receiving an M.A. in 1965 and a Ph.D. in 1971 from Stanford University. During these years, Hass received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (1963–64) and a Danforth Fellowship (1963–67). Some of his poems were published in The Young American Poets (1968). In 1971, he became a professor of English at St. Mary’s.
Hass published his first volume of poetry, Field Guide, in 1973; it received the Yale Series of Younger Poets award. His second book of poems was published in 1979, winning the William Carlos Williams Award. In the same year, he was included in the anthology Five American Poets, winning a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980. Throughout the 1980s, Hass edited works by Robinson Jeffers and Tomas Tranströmer and translated works by Nobel Prize–winner Czesław Miłosz. He also published another collection of his own poetry and a book of literary criticism, Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry (1984), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. He won the same award again in 1997. Among his other awards is the MacArthur Fellowship (1984–89). Becoming interested in the haiku poetic form, Hass edited a collection titled The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa (1994), as well as translating another volume by Miłosz, Facing the River (1995) and publishing his own Sun Under Wood: New Poems (1996).
Hass was chosen as poet laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997, and served as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. As poet laureate, Hass focused on combating illiteracy; he spoke on the subject across the country and raised money for writing conferences. His commitment to environmental issues led him to found River of Words (ROW), an organization promoting environmental and arts education. He was chosen educator of the year by the North American Association on Environmental Education (1997). Hass is also professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.
Hass published several works in the 2000s and 2010s. These include his own poetry collections Time and Materials: Poems 1997–2005 (2007), cowinner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems (2010); several translations of Miłosz’s poetry, including Selected and Last Poems 1931–2004 (2011); and the essay collections Now and Then: The Poet’s Choice Columns, 1997–2000 (2007) and What Light Can Do: Essays on Art, Imagination, and the Natural World (2012). In 2014 the American Academy of Poets presented him with the Wallace Stevens Award.
Hass published his work A Little Book on Form: An Exploration into the Formal imagination of Poetry in 2017. The work was immensely popular with critics, earning Hoss the Truman Capote Award for Literay Criticism the following year. Hass followed A Little Book on Form with the poetry collection Summer Snow: New Poems in 2020.
Bibliography
Chiasson, Dan. “Late and Soon.” New Yorker. Condé Nast, 19 Nov. 2007. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
Driscoll, Sally. “Robert Hass.” Robert Hass (2013): 1. Poetry & Short Story Reference Center. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
Hass, Robert. “Robert Hass.” Interview by Sarah Pollock. Mother Jones. Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress, Mar./Apr. 1997. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
Olson, Liesl. “Robert Hass’s Guilt or the Weight of Wallace Stevens.” Amer. Poetry Rev. 36.5 (2007): 37–45. Poetry & Short Story Reference Center. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
“Poet Robert Hass.” Poets.org. Acad. of Amer. Poets, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
“Robert Hass.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 2014. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
Teicher, Craig Morgan. "The Poet Robert Hass Is a Virtuoso of Common American Speech." The New York Times, 7 Jan. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/books/review/robert-hass-summer-snow-new-poems.html. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.