Robert Pinsky, Favorite Poems

Favorite Poems  Robert Pinsky has just finished two consecutive terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States, and he has ensured that he will be a difficult act to follow. Traditionally, the only specific duties of the poet laureate, who is appointed by the Library of Congress, are to give a lecture and reading and to introduce other writers at the Library's readings. But two years ago, Pinsky, the author of five books of poetry, most recently
The Figured Wheel, embarked on a daunting plan for the centerpiece of his laureateship. He devised the Favorite Poem Project, recording everyday Americans reading aloud poems they love (and saying why), and then archiving two hundred videos and a thousand audio tapes of the recitations as one of the Library of Congress's millennium gifts to the nation -- an end-of-the century time capsule of poems.

Pinsky's intention was to capture people from every state and every conceivable walk of life, with varying regional accents, ages, levels of education, professions, and ethnicities. Anyone could nominate a poem, as long as he or she didn't write it. Pinsky wanted to demonstrate the vigorous presence of poetry in the lives of Americans outside the insular literary world. The goal was to gather a collection not necessarily of the world's best poetry, but of the intimate bonds between Americans and the poems most meaningful to them. Pinsky has always maintained that the essential medium of poetry is the human voice. "I hope the project," he says, "will also affect the teaching of poetry -- that it will foreground a personal and indeed physical relationship to a poem as an important part of the teaching of poetry."

The archive -- administered by Pinsky, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Library of Congress, and Boston University, and funded by the NEA, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Knight Foundation -- will be available through a site on the World Wide Web (www.favoritepoem.org), a print anthology, and various educational products and broadcasts.