When Robert Pinsky, former poet laureate of the United States and founder of the Favorite Poem Project, opened the floor to questions during Thursday's lunchtime talk with students, he promised to treat each one with respect. And why wouldn't he?

At the heart of his belief, shared in his 1984 book Poetry and the World, is that "an artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond."

But Pinsky, who later quoted a family aphorism -- "everything is what it is and the opposite" -- is a poet of contradiction.

He's been called "one of the most exhilarating of all living poets."

The Colgate community will receive a literary treat from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon when he reads from his collection of poetry at 4:30 p.m. Thursday in Golden Auditorium.

Muldoon's coming to Colgate as part of the Living Writers Series, co-sponsored by the English Department and the Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts.