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I love the idea that both a four-year-old and a 98-year-old American were so attached to particular poems to feel compelled to submit them to the Favorite Poem Project. Chances are their favorite poems weren't the same, but they did share the love of the poetic form.
I recently read the 200 poems included in the book as well as the accompanying contributors' letters. Some poems were quite familiar and others were new to me. But, as much as I savored the poems while making my way through the book, the words of the contributors were equally powerful. Their one-to-fifteen lines about why they liked the poems strengthened my connection to the poetry and in turn to their humanity. They were sharing a very treasured part of themselves. They valued these poems, not because they wrote them, but because they recognized the worth of this collection of words. At the Favorite Poem Project web site, you can read a few of these statements as well as listen to selected poems read by their contributors. The project continues to evolve and now the first 50 readers are being recorded and video-taped. The tapes will become part of the Library of Congress bicentennial celebration. The project archive will be part of many future educational projects. In an interview with Robert Pinsky by Susan Kelly for The Writer, November 1999 issue, Pinsky expressed his hopes that the project will affect the teaching of poetry. "Too much of our teaching of poetry has proceeded as though the reason for a poem to exist is to have smart things said about it. Well, I like smart things, I approve of smart things, but a poem is not an occasion for saying smart things. A poem is something that sounds terrific when it is read aloud. That's the nature of the art. I think that school, alas, has inculcated the idea that a poem is something that makes you nervous, because it's a test to see if you're clever." The Favorite Poem Project multimedia archive of poems launched by Pinsky is not his first experience with the Internet. He was the first poet to read his work aloud for the Atlantic Monthly's web site in November, 1995. Visitors to the site's Poetry Pages can hear many classic American poems read by Pinsky. Pinsky has also appeared on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" where he reads and discusses poems. Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article Valued Words: Favorite Poem Project in Word Play is owned by Sandra Linville. Permission to republish Valued Words: Favorite Poem Project in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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