Departments
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Week of 9 April 1999 |
Vol. II, No. 30 |
Feature
Article
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He hears America singing: Robert Pinsky was recently appointed by the Library of Congress to a third term as U.S. poet laureate. He will spend an additional year completing work on the Favorite Poem Project and assisting the Library with poetry programs honoring its bicentennial. Photo by Fred Sway |
Pinsky to serve unprecedented third term as U.S. poet laureate
By Eric McHenry
Robert Pinsky, the most visible and celebrated U.S. poet laureate in the post's history, has been appointed to an unprecedented third term. Beginning in October, the CAS professor of English will spend one additional year completing work on the tremendously popular Favorite Poem Project and assisting the Library of Congress, which turns 200 in 2000, with its bicentennial poetry programs.
"Robert Pinsky is well suited to be the first poet laureate to serve three consecutive terms," says Librarian of Congress James Billington. "His Favorite Poem Project has captured the imagination of young and old across the nation and heightened awareness of the Library of Congress' role as the home of America's poetry archives and its poets laureate."
Billington also named three special consultants in poetry -- former Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Louise Glück, and W. S. Merwin, all Pulitzer prize winners -- to help fortify the Library's poetry program during the busy bicentennial year.
"If I'm going to stay on, it's going to be necessary for me to have a little help," Pinsky says of the additional appointments.
With his creation of the Favorite Poem Project, an extensive audio and video archive of ordinary Americans reading their best-loved poems aloud, Pinsky has placed himself at the forefront of what has been called a renaissance in American poetry. The project is headquartered at BU, which along with the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and the Library has been among its principal benefactors. To date, project director Maggie Dietz (GRS'97) and her staff have logged over 10,000 submissions in a database, Pinsky says, "and they're coming in every day." A recently created Web site in support of the project has been receiving thousands of hits a day.
The project has been allowed to flourish, Pinsky says, because its sponsors have expanded their support dramatically to keep pace with its dramatic growth. "I've been very fortunate with my University," he says. "BU made this thing possible -- the Web site, the staff, the office space. And I was also very fortunate that the NEA gave us a Millennium Grant to get us started. Maggie and I have been able to put a lot of work into the project because we've gotten a lot of help."
A Favorite Poem Project print anthology, coedited by Pinsky and Dietz, will be published this fall. In a special bicentennial conference to be held April 3 and 4 of next year, Pinsky will present the project's 1,000 audio and 200 video recordings to the Library for its Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. The conference, Poetry and the American People: Reading, Performance, and Publication, will feature readings by Pinsky and the three special con