|
Departments
|
Feature
Article Pinsky among the laureates at White House Millennium Eveningby Eric McHenry On April 8, BU President Jon Westling made his contribution to the Favorite Poem Project. On April 22, U.S. President Bill Clinton followed suit. The three most recent U.S. poets laureate, including CAS Professor of English Robert Pinsky, who currently holds the post and is the Favorite Poem Project's creator, gave a reading in the East Room of the White House Wednesday evening. Both President and Mrs. Clinton were scheduled to participate in the project -- an audio and video archive of Americans from all walks of life reading aloud their favorite poems -- as part of the event. It was the third Millennium Evening, an installment in a series of cultural presentations at the White House that emphasize millennial issues and themes. Westling chose Wallace Stevens' "The Idea of Order at Key West" to read at the Favorite Poem Project's local kickoff, held at the Boston Public Library. The poems President and Mrs. Clinton read had not yet been announced at press time. "The President and First Lady have taste in poems and ideas about what they will read," Pinsky said in an interview last week. "They are still narrowing it down." He predicted, however, that the evening's selections would reflect the nation's myriad voices and traditions. He and his fellow laureates -- Rita Dove and Robert Hass -- planned to read no original work, he said, but to choose generously and broadly from the American canon, acknowledging the "varied carols" that Whitman heard. "The occasion is to honor American poetry -- our ancestors," he said. "It will celebrate our heritage and set a model for the pleasures of poetry as a vital part of education. We'll read Whitman, Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Hart Crane, and others. It is the nature of American poetry to bring out the country's racial and cultural diversity in a positive and unforced way." The White House reading, with its laureate triumvirate, was Pinsky's brainchild -- a unique and "nonjingoistic" celebration of National Poetry Month, he said. Although different emphases and commitments have marked each laureate's tenure, the three share an approach to the role. "I suppose we are the three activist laureates," said Pinsky, who has taken on a schedule so demanding since his appointment that he has "trouble finding time to eat." "Rita Dove began the practice of making the post energetic, or proactive, and Bob Hass continued that," he said. "This is another reason they make appropriate companions in the reading." Pinsky believes that when historians weigh the accomplishments of 20th-century America, its poetry -- along with political institutions and other artistic developments, such as jazz and the feature film -- will emerge as a salient gift. "Recently poetry has surged in vitality among Americans," he said, "perhaps because of its appeal as an art based on a personal, individual level of communication. Like our music, our films, and our professional and college sports, poetry helps unite us in our differences." |
