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Arts & Ideas Launches “My Favorite Poem”

by Allan Appel | Apr 30, 2009 8:37 am

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Posted to: Arts

IMG_6777.JPGBryn Savage was in a world lit class in high school in Seattle in 1999 when she read Robert Pinsky’s translation of Dante’s Inferno. It did more than move her; it changed her life.

Ten years later, on a Wednesday afternoon in New Haven, she had a chance to meet and to thank Pinsky personally. The former U.S. Poet Laureate was in town to sign books at Barnes & Noble and formally to launch the International Festival of Arts & Ideas’s “My Favorite Poem Project.”

A flagship project of this year’s edition of the festival, “My Favorite Poem” is soliciting readers throughout the state to pick their favorite published poem and to submit it between now and June 12 via the festival’s website. Pinsky will be back on June 13 to preside over the lucky selected readers in the opening day festival event.

Savage was not sure if she would be submitting her favorite poem. But as a fourth-year graduate student studying early 18th century German poetry anthologies at Yale, she has a lot she likes. Her career might not be what it is had it not been for Pinsky’s poetry.

She was a little nervous about meeting him, as a respectable crowd of admirers lined up clutching the writer’s books to their breast (to be poetical). The books included An Invitation to Poetry, which is the national anthology of favorite poems that Pinsky helped create during his laureate’s tenure.

Of course, Savage wanted an autograph too. When it was her turn, she sat in the chair beside the writer and told him that as a result of the class and in particular his take on Dante, she started writing poetry herself. In the second semester of that high school class, each student was asked to edit his or her own anthology; Savage did writers of the Pacific Northwest.

It was music (which, according to Ezra Pound is the ultimate aspiration of verse) to the 39th poet laureate’s ears.

“Each anthologizer,” said Savage, “is positing their own canon.” She’s studying how anthologies create the foundation for a country’s literature.

“Did you know,” Pinsky replied, “that the idea of giving poems titles didn’t generally come from poets? It came from the anthologizers!”

“Of course,” said Savage.

IMG_6778.JPGAnd so it went. Shulamith Chernoff, a former student of Pinsky at Skidmore’s summer poetry intensive (she published her first chapbook at age 83) bought three copies of his anthology, one for herself, one for her brother on his 90th birthday, and one for her physician son. Pinsky said that he thought the state of poetry in the U.S. was pretty healthy.

“Poetry is as fundamental to human life as dancing,” he said between signing. “Look, it’s within us.

“What I love of about the Favorite Poem project is that it acknowledges this. You don’t need to market poetry or, you know, put poetry on umbrellas or put a poem on soap. It’s there, in human nature. We don’t bring poetry to people in this project, we ask them to bring to us what they love in poetry. And they do.”

Pinsky cited with pride several videos, also included in the anthology. In them a Cambodian girl reads her favorite poem, which is by the Harlem Renaissance great Langston Hughes; a Jamaican man reads his favorite, by Sylvia Plath; and a Latino G.I. presents his favorite, by W.B. Yeats.

IMG_6776.JPG“The more intense and passionate people are about a work of art, the less race or ethnicity is involved in their relation to it.”

What did Savage make of her interchange with Pinsky?

“He’s a charming and very kind person,” she said, “and I’m very very happy with his signature.”

More information about how to submit to The Favorite Poem Project is obtainable at the Arts & Ideas website or by calling 203-498-1212

The project’s sponsors are AT&T and Barnes & Noble, and it is being done in association with the Connecticut Library Consortium.

My Favorite Poem open readings will be held throughout the city and state between and June 12. Some upcoming include Thursday, April 30, beginning at 5:30 p.m. at Barnes & Noble and, same day, beginning at 6 p.m. at the main branch of the library. And Saturday May 9 at the Dwight Central Management Team’s family day, 12:30 to 4. All you do is bring your favorite published poem, explain briefly your connection to it, and then you become its bard and sing.

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