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Arts
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Week of 20 March 1998 |
Vol. I, No. 24 |
Arts
Favorite Poem Project: the lines are already forming
by Laura Mikols
As Robert Pinsky dashes around the country to accommodate an ever-growing number of speaking requests, the U.S. poet laureate consultant in poetry is getting ready to issue some requests of his own.
On April 1, the first day of National Poetry Month, Pinsky launches his chief endeavor: the Favorite Poem Project (FPP), which will assemble an audio/video archive of 1,000 Americans reading aloud their favorite poems. A five-city tour will initiate the FPP and begin the national solicitation of submissions.
"The archive will be a record at the end of the millennium of what we choose and what we do with our voices and faces when asked to say aloud a poem that we love," says Pinsky, CAS professor of English and creative writing. He hopes the project will convey that poetry is not only for scholars and students, but for all kinds of people.
"For many people, a certain amount of academic heaviness has infiltrated the very notion of poetry," says Maggie Dietz, who works with Pinsky at BU as project director of FPP. "The Favorite Poem Project offers perhaps the best way to learn about poetry: through people who love it."
Although he hasn't yet officially announced the project, Pinsky has already received 500 letters from people around the country who have a favorite poem they want to read aloud. The letters, he says, reflect the everyday presence of poetry in American life.
In January, National Public Radio's weekly cultural program Anthem began broadcasting the first FPP audio recordings. Among the participants was Bridget Stearns from Ketchikan, Alaska, who chose the Stevie Smith poem "Not Waving, But Drowning."
"Here in Southeast Alaska the winters are hard, and it's not uncommon for people to fall into a depression . . . last winter, it was my turn," said Stearns. "I think the poem spoke to me because its theme is isolation, feeling cut off from other people . . . but it also has a tone of defiance and bravery, a chirpiness that encouraged me."
Rudy Aukschun, a retired federal probation officer who worked in a tough part of Baltimore, was also recorded on Anthem. He read "Hold Fast to Dreams," a Langston Hughes poem that he regularly recited to his parolees. He told a story about one man who was having a hard time dealing with the outside world.
"He was kind of hanging on by a thread, like he was looking for an answer," said Aukschun. "I recited 'Hold fast to dreams/for if dreams die/life is like a broken-winged bird/that cannot fly.'
"He gave me a surprised look, and then continued the part of the poem that he remembered: 'Hold fast to dreams/for when dreams go/life is a barren field/frozen with snow.'
"It was my turn to be surprised -- but it was way beyond surprise, it was a connection made," said Aukschun. "I had the feeling that the poem had power -- the power to give courage. And although he had a struggle ahead of him, he did make it through parole. At our last meeting he told me how much that poem meant when he was wavering."
The project embodies two of Pinsky's strongest convictions: that poetry is meant to be read aloud and that American poetry, from the time of Whitman and Dickinson, has been one of our glories and national treasures. A year ago, when Pinsky first conceived the idea, he wondered what poem a person like President Bill Clinton would choose. He will soon find out. On April 22, President and Mrs. Clinton will read their favorite poems aloud at the White House.
"The archive will be a gift to the nation's future: an archive that may come to represent, in a form both individual and public, the collective cultural consciousness of the American people at the turn of the century," says Pinsky, who was appointed poet laureate last year by the Library of Congress.
"I hope we get some poems in Chinese and Spanish and Yiddish because that's also a part of the portrait of Americans and poetry," he adds, noting that poems in other languages will be accompanied by their English translations.
The cameras will begin rolling as Pinsky launches the project at New York City's Town Hall at 8 p.m. on April 1, hosted by the Academy of American Poets. First up will be a few well-known New Yorkers reading their favorites, including Ed Bradley, cohost of 60 Minutes, Geraldine Ferraro, cohost of CNN's Crossfire, and musician Suzanne Vega. They will be joined by New York City elementary and high school students and an adult literacy student.
Pinsky will join fellow Bostonians at 6:30 p.m. on April 8 at the Boston Public Library for a similar reading.
Collaborating with Pinsky on the project are the Library of Congress, which houses the office of the poet laureate, and the New England Foundation for the Arts, which will administer the project and assume all responsibilities for production, sponsorship, and fundraising. Boston University has made a grant to the project to facilitate the collection and processing of submissions. Pinsky will serve as editorial and artistic director of the project, and his office at BU will be the center of FPP correspondence.
FPP recordings will become part of the Library of Congress Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. By 2000, they hope to make the archive accessible through several media, including: audio/video broadcast, a Web site, a print anthology, and an educational interactive CD-ROM.
For more information about the Favorite Poem Project, call Maggie Dietz at 353-2821.