Robert Pinsky was the twelfth poet in the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series and read in 2010. Former Poet Laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky is the author of seven volumes of poetry, including Gulf Music (2007) and The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996, which received the Lenore Marshall Award and the Ambassador Book Award of the English Speaking Union. Pinsky's most recent book is Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud (2009). Pinsky's best-selling translation of The Inferno of Dante received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Howard Morton Landon Prize for translation. Pinsky is one of the few members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters to have appeared on television's The Simpsons.