Like many traditional forms of expression, poetry has had trouble finding a place in modern culture. But Robert Pinsky, the United States' ninth poet laureate, thinks he knows how to breathe new life into the literary form, using equal parts modern technology and human spirit.
"Unlike electronic media, the medium of poetry, which is one person's breath, is inherently, by its nature, on an individual and human scale," said Pinsky in an email interview while traveling to promote the Favorite Poem Project, an official project of the Library of Congress' bicentennial celebration. "An important aspect of the project is to demonstrate the relationship between the reader and the poem."
To demonstrate that relationship, Pinsky, along with the New England Foundation for the Arts and Boston University, are recording Americans -- from first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to John Doherty, a ditch digger from Braintree, Massachusetts -- reading their favorite poems. The readings are being archived online, and eventually the most compelling recordings will be housed in the Library of Congress.
"One of the principle notions behind this project is that poetry is a physical, bodily art -- an art for which the medium is the reader's body," said Maggie Dietz, project director for the Favorite Poem Project. "There's something incredible that happens to a person's face or voice when they read aloud a favorite poem and the experience reaches its highest pitch.
"Audio and video respects the fact that poetry is a vocal art, and also creates an American representation, a snapshot of the country, through the lens of poetry, at the turn of the millennium."
While project organizers have already held more than 200 public readings around the country and amassed numerous recordings on the Web site, Dietz said those readings are background for a more ambitious project: collecting professional-quality recordings of 1,000 Americans this summer for inclusion in the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress. People are welcome to send proposals for inclusion in the final archive until the end of April.
The most popular poem selected by potential reciters has been Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." Shel Silverstein is the second-most popular poet from among more than 10,000 proposals received so far.
Perhaps more telling than the poems readers select are the contextual remarks readers offer, some of which will be included in the archived readings.
"Here in southeast Alaska the winters are hard and it's not uncommon for people to fall into a depression," notes Bridget Stearns in a reading of Stevie Smith's "Not Waving, But Drowning," which she read for the project. "Last winter, it was my turn. 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 to keep thrashing and waving," Stearns said in her annotations.
The project got its start in April 1997, when Pinsky conceived of the Say a Poem Project. Within the month, the Library of Congress accepted the Favorite Poem Project for its bicentennial celebration in 2000.
Support for the project grew quickly. In January 1998, National Public Radio's Anthem began irregular broadcasts of readings from the project. The project officially launched 1 April 1998, and soon thereafter the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Pinsky and company a US$500,000 grant -- the endowment's largest millennial project award in 1998.
Dietz hopes to present the complete audio and video archive at the Library of Congress in April 2000. An online version of the complete archive is also planned, as well as educational products based on the project.
