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Robert Hass

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Robert L. Hass is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He won the 2007 National Book Award and shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the collection Time and Materials: Poems 1997–2005. In 2014 he was awarded the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.

Hass's works are well known for their West Coast subjects and attitudes. He was born in San Francisco and grew up in San Rafael. He grew up with an alcoholic mother, an essential topic in the 1996 poem collection Sun Under Wood. His older brother encouraged him to dedicate himself to his writing. Awestruck by Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg, among others in the 1950s Bay Area poetry scene, Hass entertained the idea of becoming a beatnik. He graduated from Marin Catholic High School in 1958. When the area became influenced by East Asian literary techniques, such as haiku, Hass took many of these influences up in his poetry. He has been hailed as "a lyrical virtuoso who can turn even cooking recipes into poetry."

Hass graduated from Saint 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. His Stanford classmates included the poets Robert Pinsky, John Matthias, and James McMichael. Hass taught literature and writing at the University at Buffalo in 1967. From 1971 to 1989, he taught at his alma mater St. Mary's, when he transferred to the University of California, Berkeley faculty. He has been a visiting faculty member in the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa on several occasions and was a panelist at the Workshop's 75th-anniversary celebration in June 2011.

From 1995 to 1997, during Hass's two terms as the US Poet Laureate (Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress), he became a champion of literacy, poetry, and ecological awareness. He crisscrossed 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." After his self-described "act of citizenship," he wrote a weekly column on poetry in The Washington Post until 2000. In addition, he serves as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, was a trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize (now trustee emeritus), and works actively for literacy and the environment.

As a significant influence on his poetry, Hass cites Beat poet Lew Welch and praises the slogan "Raid Kills Bugs Dead," which Welch crafted while working for an advertising firm. Additionally, he has named Chilean Pablo Neruda, Peruvian César Vallejo, and Polish poets Zbigniew Herbert, Wisława Szymborska, and Czesław Miłosz, whom he regards as the five most essential poets of the last 50 years. While at Berkeley, Hass spent 15 to 20 years translating the poetry of Miłosz, his fellow Berkeley professor and neighbor, as part of a team with Robert Pinsky and Miłosz.

In 1999 Hass appeared in Wildflowers, the debut film by director Melissa Painter. In the movie, Hass plays The Poet. A writer dies of an unnamed chronic illness. Excerpts from his poetry are included in the script, primarily read by Hass and actress Daryl Hannah.

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Summer Snow

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