Robert Hass
Robert Hass has published many books of poetry including Field
Guide, Praise, Human Wishes, and Sun Under Wood, as well as
a book of essays on poetry, Twentieth Century Pleasures. Hass
translated many of the works of Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet,
Czeslaw Milosz, and he edited Selected Poems: 1954-1986 by Tomas
Tranströmer, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and
Issa, and Poet’s Choice: Poems for Everyday Life. He was the guest
editor of the 2001 edition of Best American Poetry. As US Poet
Laureate (1995-1997), his deep commitment to environmental
issues led him to found River of Words (ROW), an organization
that promotes environmental and arts education in affiliation with
the Library of Congress Center for the Book. Hass is chairman of
ROW’s board of directors, and judges their annual international
environmental poetry and art contest for youth. He is also a board
member of International Rivers Network. Robert Hass was chosen
as Educator of the Year by the North American Association on
Environmental Education and, in 2005, elected to the American
Academy of Arts & Sciences. His recent books include Now &
Then, a collection of his Washington Post articles (Shoemaker &
Hoard, April 2007) and a collection of poems entitled Time and
Materials (Ecco/HarperCollins, Fall 2007), which was nominated
for the National Book Award. Awarded the MacArthur “Genius”
Fellowship, twice the National Book Critics’ Circle Award (in 1984
and 1997), and the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1973, Robert
Hass is a professor of English at UC Berkeley.