Lecture to explore poems and culture

The beaming smile and laughter-creased face of Elizabeth Wojtusik on the Favorite Poem Project website tells it all.

Undeniable emotion emanates even more as the Humarock, Mass., teaching consultant recites Robert Frost's "Out Out" aloud on video, testifying to poetry's powerful vocal art and personal connections.

And that is exactly what Robert Pinsky, three-term Poet Laureate of the United States and mastermind behind the Favorite Poem Project, intended.

These are also themes that Pinsky — who currently teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University, edits for the on-line journal Slate and contributes to The NewsHours with Jim Lehrer — will evoke at this week's Tanner Lecture series, an annual event committed to advancing human values-related scholarly and scientific learning.

Speaking on "American Culture and the Voice of Poetry," the award-winning poet will explore a variety of issues to appeal to many students and faculty. Focusing not only on poetry, he will also address its continuing importance in America and its culture at large.

"Poetry is fundamental, not decorative," Pinsky said. "It has a special place in a democracy, and in particular this democracy and particularly in an age of glorious and excellent mass art and electronic media."

At a time when many feel that interest in poetry is suffering at the hands of technological innovation, Pinsky has attempted to illustrate its perpetual significance.

Pinsky also stressed that "a poem is not a challenge to say smart things." Rather, he said, poetry appreciation "has to do with a deep craving for an art that is on a human, individual scale."

This passion that drives the poet laureate's actions is exactly what appeals to Will Gallagher, associate director for the University Center for Human Values. The center is sponsoring the lecture and film series and is responsible for inviting Pinsky to speak.

Gallagher explained, "freedom, democracy and triumph of the individual mind over the influence of aristocracy" engendered an entirely new breed and position of poetry in America. Pinsky, therefore, is the perfect person to discuss this evolution. Evoking a recurring theme of Pinsky's service and this week's lectures, Gallagher continued, "Poetry gives ordinary people a voice to express themselves in a personal way."

C.K. Williams, a long-time friend of Pinsky and a professor in the University's writing program, said that even those not expressly interested in poetry can take away much from the Tanner Lectures, emphasizing the rub-off effects of Pinsky's "innate generosity" and commitment to selflessly spreading the joys and bounties of poetry to others.

"Robert is a very giving person and has a very generous spirit," Williams praised, adding that Pinsky's work as poet laureate is "not about himself, it's for the American people — his poetry shows that too."

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These efforts are especially evident in Pinsky's devotion to the Favorite Poem Project, the topic of an informational video that will kick off the Tanner series at 3:30 p.m. today.

Based on an archive consolidation featuring Americans of all ages, ethnicities, regions and occupations reading aloud their favorite poem along with an explanation of the producers' goals, the project demonstrates Pinsky's devotion to promoting the "individual and personal scale of poetry," which also extends into the overall position and specific meaning of art and poetry in our nation at large.

A recent CNN poll, "Have Robert Pinsky and his Favorite Poem Project prompted you to think about poetry more often?" garnered a 74 percent affirmative response.

And college students are not missing out on poetry's rewards either. Indeed, as University English professor Craig Dworkin pointed out, "Half a century ago, a typical student would have taken a poetry class as one of their core courses in college — today, that's not the case."

But Pinsky explained that people should not let speculation over poetry's obsolesence fool them.

"There seems to be a considerable increase in the popularity of poetry," he stressed. "This generation of college students, beginning when you were three or four years old, have been subjected to many waves of mass art, based on performance and spectacle — in that context of mass art (some of it very good), an art based on the individual reader's breadth has a special value," he said. "Like certain styles of grooming in your generation, poetry embodies something not part of mass culture, of performance or spectacle."

Indeed, Dworkin added, "Many students say they don't like poetry — but that's like saying you don't like music because you've only ever heard polkas."

"Same is true for poetry. You have to keep looking until you find the writing that really blows your mind," he said.

Lia Romeo '03 attested to this, saying she knows a good poem when she reads it. "Essentially it comes down to this," she said. "When I read something and it takes my breath away and for a little while I feel like more than whatever I was before."