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ROBERT PINSKY - APRIL 1999 FEATURE  

  

The Cortland Review

FEATURE

Robert Pinsky
A postcard from U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky promoting TCR's participation in the Favorite Poem Project.

Favorite Poems
Celebrate National Poetry Month with a TCR contribution to Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project in real audio.

John Kinsella
In and Out of the Swamp- The next chapter in John Kinsella's autobiography series at TCR.

Robert Pinsky

 

A Postcard from Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky's real audio greeting Click to hear the greeting


Wednesday, April 7, 1999

I am in the midst of eleven days away from home, then one day back and another week of travel. I hope Poetry Week is a good idea. Favorite Poem reading in DC tonight, with William Cohen & Eleanor Holmes Norton & Harold Varmus, head of the NIH joining schoolkids, cabdrivers, etc. Then tomorrow nite in NY schoolkids joining in with Joyce Carol Oates, Grace Paley & other fiction writiers. The project is thriving, with over 10,000 hits a day at the web site www.favoritepoem.org. And we have completed the first video!

I have learned from the project that these events bring communities together: people of diverse kinds from one town or city, all sharing works they treasure, none of them an expert or the author—it creates understanding and respect, fosters attention, in ways I had not anticipated. It is as though readers and poems, in the absence of the authors of the poems, fulfill some of Whitman's vision of holding things together.

Good wishes,
Robert


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