Life
Hass is a California poet whose works are well-known for their West Coast subject and attitude. He was born in San Francisco and grew up in San Rafael. He grew up with an alcoholic mother, a major topic in the 1996 poem collection, Sun Under Wood. It was his older brother who encouraged him to dedicate himself to his writing. Awe-struck 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 is able to turn even cooking recipes into poetry".
Hass is married to the poet and antiwar activist Brenda Hillman, who is also a professor at Saint Mary's College of California.
Read more about this topic: Robert Hass
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own.”
—W.E. (William Ewart)
“The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and disasters, because these things wake one up and one gets very familiar and intimate with them and finally they become tame again.... No, it is more like being in a hotel room in Hoboken let us say, and just enough money in one’s pocket for another meal.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)