Pinsky: Poetry in a world of Facebook, Kindles

Originally printed April 23, 2011.

The following interview is with former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, who is in town today as part of the local celebrations of UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day.

» JCC: Since you're coming to Iowa City -- UNESCO City of Literature and home of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop -- how would you describe the role that this community has played in American poetry?

RP: Historically, the Writers' Workshop was the pioneer graduate program in creative writing. Like the GI Bill and the Morrill Act (establishing land-grant universities) the growth of MFA programs has made American education and culture, including the art of poetry, more available. Creative writing as a discipline has had a democratic effect. (That the degree-granting programs also incur the risk of becoming an obnoxious guild is part of the way things work, I guess.)

» JCC: How has the so-called "Program Era" (à la Mark McGurl) influenced American poetry and fiction in the past half-century? How is/isn't that influence waning in the present?

RP: I hadn't heard that phrase before. In a way, I'm not qualified to answer -- I've never attended a creative writing program or taken a regular creative writing workshop. And the MFA program where I teach, at Boston University, there is an unusually intense emphasis on studying literature, learning languages and other cultures, etc. Louise Glück, Rosanna Warren and I (and before that Derek Walcott and I) teach students who must complete four graduate-level literature courses -- the same courses that Ph.D. students take. And they must complete a foreign language requirement. In many ways, I remain an outsider to the world of "The Program Era" -- a mostly benign outsider, as indicated, I hope, by my answer about the democratizing nature of the MFA programs.

» JCC: How are your creative writing students different now than they were 30 years ago?

RP: I'm not sure. Possibly, they are more hungry for what used to be supplied by English departments?

» JCC: Why do people go to poetry readings to hear "famous poets"? And how has the poetry-reading circuit affected how you write/read?

RP: I think the best reason to attend a poetry reading is to get some hint of what the poet hears while writing. In other words, I personally don't put much value on the reading as a good show -- for that, I'd rather watch TV. Elizabeth Bishop didn't give an amusing or dynamite performance, but I loved hearing her read her work (though she hated giving readings) because it helped me think about the shapes of her lines and sentences. It gave me some insight into the work of a great artist.

» JCC: The role of poetry in the United States seems much less important to the lives of everyday people than the role of poetry in almost any other nation in the world. Which culture/nation do you think has the healthiest appreciation for poetry? And what are the key differences between what they do and what we do?

RP: I urge you to look at (and listen to!) the video segments at www.favorite poem.org. (In a friendly spirit, not meaning to offend, I think you may sentimentalize "they" and underestimate "we.")

» JCC: How has social networking changed your approach to poetry and reading/writing communities?

RP: My main reason for being on Facebook is to help people know about the Favorite Poem Project-- the anthologies, the videos at www.favoritepoem.org, and the Summer Institute for K-12 Teachers. I fell into FB because, in some way I still don't understand, someone else started a "Robert Pinsky" page. I'm just a zaydee; I don't really know what I'm talking about.

» JCC: How is reading a poem on a Kindle different than reading it in a book, journal or magazine?

RP: I've never bonded with my Kindle -- I use it to read a chapter or two of Dickens or Bronte or Elmore Leonard on airplane rides. On the one hand, I guess it bothers me that visual lines are wrecked on it. On the other hand, those Latin poets wrote lines so firm in rhythm that the poems were read, and survived, on scrolls where they were all run together, like some wacky digital printout. Or am I wrong about that? Anyway, I'm not a Kindler. But I do have about 200 poems on my telephone -- a statement I wouldn't even understand a decade or two ago!

» JCC: I've been rereading "An Explanation of America." So much of what you wrote then still seems timely today. How did writing that poem help prepare you for the impressive, large-scale projects you undertook as poet laureate?

RP: I've never liked titles and official prizes like "poet laureate"; always felt I was not cut out for them. The Favorite Poem Project is in a peculiar way a critique or resistance to expectations: Instead of marketing or missionary work or telling people to read poems, the FPP asked people what poems they like. Instead of a poet reading his or her work, or a famous professor talking about a poem, the voices and responses of readers. Instead of "advocacy," attention.

Your question makes me wonder if in a similar way, the rather eccentric, drastically unconventional book-length poem "An Explanation of America" resists expectations about poetry. ... I'm not sure I've written anything else as nervy and cuckoo as that book.

» JCC: How would you approach "An Explanation of America" differently if you were publishing it in 2011 instead of 1979?

To think about this question is upsetting for me: I fear for the world, and for the future, more than I did 30 years ago. On the one hand, the poem tries to imagine disaster and ugliness as well as some hope -- its concluding passages express some disgust at hope itself. But on the other hand, I hadn't imagined that "nature" in the sense of something untouched by human industry would no longer exist. I hadn't imagined that the Supreme Court would confer on corporations the freedom of speech rights of actual people. I hadn't imagined the recurrence of something resembling the Thirty Years War.

» JCC: And given that "Explanation" was subtitled as "A Poem to My Daughter," how does she like the poem? Would you recommend the book-length poem as a form that other fathers should use for explaining concepts that "cannot be known or told in final terms"?

RP: The daughter addressed in the poem wrote the excellent notes to my "Inferno" of Dante. She has three children of her own. Like her and me, they enjoy poems by Walter de la Mare and Edward Lear. And William Blake and Emily Dickinson.

Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at 319-887-5435 or jcharisc@press-citizen.com.

Our View - City of literature moves forward with organization

(Iowa City Press-Citizen "Our View" July 18, 2009)

With the incorporation of a new non-profit organization, local leaders have reached the next stage of planning in terms of how the community should build on UNESCO's decision to recognize Iowa City as an international City of Literature. International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill, who will serve as the new organization's president, will provide an update during his talk at the Iowa City Book Festival at 2 p.m. today in the University of Iowa Main Library.

The most important feature of the new organization is that its board of directors will include representatives from the local major stakeholders who stand to benefit from the organization's success -- a list that includes UI, Iowa City, Coralville, North Liberty, Johnson County, the Chamber of Commerce and the Conventional and Visitors Bureau.

There had been some concerns early on that Iowa City would try to claim this honor solely for itself. Besides creating an unnecessary turf war with the university and other local governments, devoting this non-profit organization solely to Iowa City's interests would have missed the broader vision -- not to mention potential federal grant money -- opened up by the UNESCO designation.

"We're looking forward to doing something on a bigger scale," said Iowa City Public Library Director Susan Craig, who will serve as the organization's vice president for the first year. "The ideas that are coming out of people are not just regional in scope -- and by regional I mean 'Midwest.' We want to build an organization that attracts attention around the country and around the world. The plans are very ambitious, but I think they can be fulfilled."

Unlike the other two UNESCO-designated cities of literature -- Edinburgh, Scotland, and Melbourne, Australia -- Iowa City doesn't have enough of a donor base to support these projects on its own. Josh Schamberger, president of the Iowa City/Coralville Conventional and Visitors Bureau, said the organization already has $100,000 committed -- more than a third of its goal of $250,000. So far the public-private mix is lopsided by the money committed by the cities and UI, but the organization is aggressively going after more private donations and foundation grants. And to quality for those grants, the organization needs to look far beyond the local area.

"This is not only a brand that Iowa City should run with and celebrate itself," Schamberger said, "it's also something the state should take ownership of."

If the value of the UNESCO designation is going to be appreciated by people outside of the Iowa City area, Iowa City needs to avoid territorially viewing it as a mere pat on the back for our little Athens of the Midwest.

"It's an honor for the state as a whole," Craig said. "The designation and the intensity of literary effort, accomplishment and celebration that happens in Johnson County reflect very well on the state of Iowa. People are starting to take notice of Iowa after our role in the presidential election and the recent ruling about marriage equality. I'm not putting the City of Literature status on same level as those other two factors, but people are noticing that interesting things are happening in Iowa."

With one book festival under its belt, the organization's leaders now need to focus on hiring a director capable of providing clear evidence of progress over the next two years.

We do want this organization to hold successful events that help sustain and market the remarkable combination of resources that have made Iowa a site of great writing for nearly a century. But we also want those events to provide tangible benefits to the local economy by helping to put heads on pillows and butts in seats.