POET LAUREATE

LAKE FOREST -- He was in the 'dumb' class in eighth grade.Unathletic, unpopular, told by family that he'd never amount to anything, Robert Pinsky was a guy Long Branch, N.J., chalked-up as forgettable.

But Pinsky had a secret: Words.

He loved words.

The way they sounded in his head.

The way they sounded in his throat and through his lips.

As long as he could remember, he said, he thought about the sounds of words and phrases.

He loved language so much, in fact, that language loved him back.

Today, the nation's 39th Poet Laureate does what he loves to do and is paid handsomely -- in notoriety and money -- to do it.

When he's not teaching graduate writing at Boston University, Pinsky is talking up the joy of verse, working at increasing public awareness of poetry, from stuffy $500-a-plate fund-raisers to schools and prisons.

Pinsky, 57, was at Lake Forest College Monday, doing what poet laureates earn $35,000 a year doing.

He read from his works, talked about being a poet and, in general, captivated an auditorium full of both old and young admirers -- a few who were probably told by their creative writing teachers to show up or else.

Though Pinsky looks the part of the dark, brooding poet -- one can envision him scribbling down his angst with a quill by firelight in some lonely room -- he's really a '90s and beyond guy who creates poetry while driving in the car or writes on a computer in the hubbub of his own kitchen.

Pinsky said he loves poetry because, like computers, it's fast.

He has said that computers and poetry have two things in common: Speed and memory.

Pinsky's love for computers started in 1984 when a software company employed him to design a video game.

He's worked to increase the availability of poetry on the Internet and is editor of the Internet poetry magazine, Slate.

Pinsky, who has called poetry 'technology that uses the human body,' said he has a shopkeeper's mentality about writing.

'I write to make something, not to reflect,' he said.

'Like a carpenter banging nails into wood, I'm trying to make something.'

Most recently, Pinsky penned a best-selling translation of Dante's Inferno. He has also published five books of poetry and three books of prose.

Pinsky had some advice for teaching poetry in schools: 'It's very important that teachers teach something they love.' Poetry, said Pinsky, begins with love and attachment.

He said teachers should read aloud with conviction, that pleasure in the sounds of poetry should be stressed.

And he said teachers should encourage students to write personal anthologies, 15 or 20 pages 'written out by their hand, of language that the student lives.'

Pinsky said that even if a kid doesn't like to read, he or she may listen to rap music, or zone in on a certain TV sitcom because he likes the words.

'There's no such thing as someone completely cold to language,' he said. 'Even non-readers are attuned to the sounds of words.'

Poetry appears to be growing in popularity among average folk in this country, which Pinsky said is because Americans crave a more personal form of expression.

While American pop music, feature films, sports, casual clothing and TV are popular around the world, Pinsky said those creations rely on a centralized, elite group of experts who create on a mass scale. That impersonality leaves an appetite or a void that poetry can fill.

Pinsky is planning something personal during his two-year stretch as laureate.

Called the Favorite Poem Project, he's just begun a videotape archive which will eventually include as many as 1,000 Americans, both famous and regular folk, reading poems aloud, followed by comment on why they love the poem they chose.

He's already talked to first lady Hillary Clinton, who has agreed to participate.

He is also planning to stage mass poetry readings in major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis and, hopefully, Chicago, he said.

Pinsky's ideas for verse come from everything and everywhere.

'Almost anything, if you look at it hard enough, has an imaginative density,' he said, eyeballing a nearby shoe.

'The world stinks of humanity. Everything's waiting to be written about.' 'There's no such thing as someone completely cold to language.

Even non-readers are attuned to the sounds of words.'

Robert Pinsky, poet laureate

Elissa West, 20, a junior at Lake Forest College, finds a place on the floor in the standing room only crowd listening to poet laureate Robert Pinsky, giving a reading Monday at Lake Forest College.