- Premio Capri (Italian) in 2009
- Manhae Foundation Prize (Korean) in 2006
- PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry in 2004
- Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1997–2000)
- National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (1974)
- Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University
- Saxifrage Prize (1980) for An Explanation of America
- William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America
- Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism (1988) for Poetry and the World
- Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1996) for The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966–1996
- Ambassador Book Award in Poetry of the English Speaking Union
- Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (1997) for The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966–1996
- Los Angeles Times Book Award (1994) for The Inferno of Dante
- Book-of-the-Month Editor's Choice (1994) for The Inferno of Dante
- Academy of American Poets' Translation Award (1994) for The Inferno of Dante
Pinsky has received honorary doctorates from numerous institutions such as Northwestern University (2000),[24] Binghamton University (2001),[25] the University of Michigan (2001),[26] Lake Forest College (2007),[27] Emerson College (2012),[28] Southern New Hampshire University (2014)[29] University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (2016),[30] and Merrimack College (2016)[31]