In a speech preceding the men's basketball Blue-White Scrimmage that attracted thousands of fans, former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky spoke in a smaller but still filled Page Auditorium, saying Americans value larger-than-life performance arts such as college basketball.
Poetry, by its nature, is on an individual scale unlike mass events, Pinsky said. He added that after Sept. 11, many people turned to poetry to counteract the immense images of destruction and catastrophe.
"[Mass scale] can be good, but we crave it on an individual, human scale," he said.
Pinsky, the ninth U.S. poet laureate, highlighted two of beliefs about poetry and its role in American culture. First, he said the medium of poetry is not words, thoughts, images or lies but rather centers around the breath of individual who is reading the poem.
"The medium of poetry is the human body," Pinsky said. "Poetry is the most bodily of all the arts."
Secondly, Pinsky said Americans--from custodial staff to Board of Trustees members--love poetry and can speak about it intelligently.
His "Favorite Poem Project"--in which tens of thousands of Americans submitted their thoughts about their favorite poems and read them aloud to the Library of Congress--embodied this belief. The video included people of all ages and ethnicities and some were read in foreign languages to represent the diversity of the United States.
Pinsky compared writing poetry to "doodling on a piano." Students and parents observed this as he drafted a poem about death. He concentrated on the audio components of death and other words and relationships that are associated with death.
"Poetry sounds great when it's said aloud," Pinsky said. "Most people underestimate getting the equivalent for sound [when they translate poems]."
Students said they were wowed when Pinsky drafted a poem right in front of them. "He's a really musical-minded guy," said freshman Ben Dach.
Rebecca Pomeroy, another freshman, said she left the speech with a new understanding about how both sound and words are important factors in poetry. "I understand both sides of writing and sound," Pomeroy said. "Words and sounds make a more complete body of work."
After reading three of his poems, Pinsky invited audience members to ask questions. During this time, he further discussed his thoughts on being a poet laureate of the United States.
Former president Bill Clinton's poet laureate showed humility when he discussed his prestigious role from 1997 to 2000 and said compared the title poet laureate to being complemented on your hair. He said the less glamorous but more noble and democratic part of the title was consulting the Library of Congress.
Pomeroy, however, admitted the title of U.S. poet laureate attracted her to the speech in the first place. "I would never say I'm seeing Robert Pinsky. I would say I'm going to see the poet laureate," she said.
Freshman Edward Douglas said Pinsky showed appreciation and respect for poetry without being consumed by the laurels he attained.
"[Pinsky] said that poems are not snippets of expression that are recited but real means of communication," Douglas said. "Poetry in America is not an art form itself but has a political and social structure."
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