Robert Pinsky on the Favorite Poem Project

VIDEO DESCRIPTION

Poet Robert Pinsky explains the Favorite Poem Project, documenting Americans' love for poetry.

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Robert Pinsky on the Favorite Poem Project america poem writing america poetry love bigthink favorite poem project literature issues poetry issues robert pinskyRobert Pinsky on the Favorite Poem Project

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Question:  What is the Favorite Poem Project?
Robert Pinsky:  That is one of the main ideas behind The Favorite Poem Project that 
concept that the poem finds its combination in the audience’s body and that’s an 
important principle I think in a democracy because the dignity of the individual is 
reflected in fact that the medium is on a human scale.  It’s on an individual scale.  It’s not 
on a mass scale.  It’s on the scale of one person’s voice saying the poem that’s related to 
the other reason I undertook the project.

There is a kind of glib, often reactionary attitude that all Americans are jerks.  They're 
yahoos.  They don’t like art.  They don’t like poetry.  They only like their cars, their 
expensive clothes, and their electronic equipment and they're just glutinous dopes.  Well, 
now I have letters from many, many thousands of Americans saying why they love poem 
by Du Fu why they love poem by the insurance salesman who lives in Ashberry Palm.  
This African American woman in Washington who loves this poem by Alexander Polk 
reads it  in her your translation from the Russian.

Stereotypes in general and the stereotype of Americans in particular, as though somehow 
they’ve been colleagues where the Russians are superior to us because they have cultures 
in which poetry has a settled place. They are not inferior, it’s not necessarily superior.  
We are still making up a lot of our culture as we go along.  So there is that if I dare use 
the word patriotic aspect of The Favorite Poem Project as well.