Meditation at Lagunitas
The Favorite Poem Project: Andrew Clark reads Robert Hass
Andrew Clark, supervisor of serials control and acquisitions at the LAW library
“Meditation at Lagunitas” by Robert Hass
“I’ve always loved the way that Hass mimics the thought process as the poem moves through its layers, from generalities to memories and beautifully rendered, precise images.”
"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.
Click here to listen to Hakim Walker (CAS’09) read Martin Luther King, Jr.
Click here to listen to an autumn’s worth of favorite poems.