April is national poetry month, and there is great stuff out there on the internet. Of all the rich offerings, perhaps the most engaging is Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project. This collection of short videos showcases individuals reading and speaking intimately about poems they love. These videos, a permanent part of the Library of Congress spoken word archive, are a wonderful teaching and learning tool. It’s hard to pick a favorite because so many are so good. Teenage girls might particularly enjoy Minstrel Man (read by a Cambodian-American girl who survived Pol Pot’s Killing Fields) This page will take you to the video selection. I gained a new appreciation of Sylvia Plath’s Nick and the Candlestick after seeing and hearing photographer Seph Rodney recite. His intensity, intelligence and vitality will grab you, too, I’ll bet. He says of his first reading of the poem, “It was powerful, rough, bitter, caustic, and at the same time urgent about the need for love.”
Tags: favorite poem project, library of congress, poetry, robert pinsky, seph rodney, sylvia plath
Sally, this is so cool! I enjoyed the first two posts…maybe you will inspire me to send one of my girls to an all-girls school! (something I’m theoretically interested in, not sure I can convince them to consider it…we are doing all-girls camp in the summer, which is fabulous). It was actually the experience of having my daughter (then age 11) at an all-girls camp for a month that made me start thinking more about the idea of an all-girls school. There is something incredibly powerful for girls in seeing all the roles in a community filled by girls and women…
Sally this is an absolute treasure! I love poetry and this website took me back to high school. I used to be to on the Speech and Debate team and it was a truly empowering experience for me. Even though I didn’t go to an all girls school, I was able to find my voice through poetry. It helped me develop my self-esteem and to connect with others.
I am eager to share this with our girls at AGS. We have been discussing doing a Poetry Slam and this resource will truly help. Many of our girls want to use poetry to express themselves and find their voice. I love that the voices of these featured authors are coming alive through people of different gender, race, and age. Kudos on this find!
In the time since I first posted this, I have watched more of these extraordinary and heart-touching videos. The Robert Frost, the Goethe, the Stanley Kunitz readers. . . they all elicited tears. But also made me glad to be a human being. And how many short videos can you say that about? This collection is truly a treasure.
hi sally… good stuff
just a few comments… it’s not cool to be smart.. is a topic that both girls and boys need to talk about… although i am a writer.. i hate reading about how to write.. it often feels like the author(s) are trying to show you how clever they are.. sometimes the advice is good.. but the delivery is often annoying… i don’t read much poetry but is was interesting having different people talk about why they liked a certain poem… since this is a ‘girls’ blog… why didn’t you have pov chin on the front page reading minstrel man.. her story was powerful and compelling.. it might have inspired more readers to go to the video page..