I Have a Dream
The Favorite Poem Project: Hakim Walker (CAS'09) reads Martin Luther King, Jr.
"By reading poems we love aloud, we can learn how much pleasure there can be in the sounds of words,” says Robert Pinsky, a CAS professor and former U.S. poet laureate. “It’s as though saying the words of a poem aloud makes one feel more able, more capable than in ordinary life. You enter a different state.”
Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project in 1997 during the first of an unprecedented three terms as poet laureate to encourage Americans to celebrate and explore their love of poetry. Since then, the project — now directed by BU poet Maggie Dietz (GRS’97) — has produced three anthologies and more than 1,000 readings around the country.
Every week, BU Today features a member of the BU community reading his or her favorite poem. Any student or faculty or staff member can participate.
If you’d like to read your favorite poem for BU Today, e-mail us at today@bu.edu.
Hakim Walker (CAS'09)
"I Have a Dream" by Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The first time I ever read the 'I Have a Dream' speech was in fifth grade. We had studied it so well that I had parts of it memorized, and the one part that I knew I would never forget was the line where Dr. King said that we should not be judged by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character."