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An impressive and festive array of some of America's best-loved poets gathered at the Work Center for an unprecedented literary event: Nineteen American poets reading works by a variety of poets other than themselves. The reading was part of US Poet Laureate and Summer Program faculty member Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poems Project, in which a wide array of Americans are asked to read their favorite poems aloud throughout the country.
More than four hundred people packed the Stanley Kunitz Common Room and spilled out onto the grounds for a chance to hear participants' favorite poems that opened with Gerald Stern's excerpt of Hart Crane's "To Brooklyn Bridge", and finished with Stanley Kunitz reading Gerard Manley Hopkins' "God's Grandeur."
Participants in American Poets' Favorite Poems Reading.
Bottom row, left to right: Alan Dugan, Terri Cader, Stanley Kunitz;
Second row: David Ferry, Maggie Dietz, Marie Howe, Gerald Stern, Tom Sleigh; Third row: Louise Glück, Marge Piercy, John Skoyles;
Fourth row: Robert Pinsky, Mark Doty; Fifth row: Robin Becker,
Frank Bidart, Lloyd Schwartz;
Sixth row: Carl Phillips, David Rivard, Gail Mazur.
Photo: Marian Roth
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"This gathering [was] a wonderful demonstration to the audience, each other, and the world that we love poetry and can't live without it," said Pulitzer Prize winner Lloyd Schwartz, who read Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat". And those in Provincetown weren't the only ones who understood the magnitude of night: cameras from the CBS News program Sixty Minutes were on hand to record the event, as were local cable television and radio crews.
Other poets included in the reading were David Rivard, Louise Glück, Frank Bidart, Robin Becker, Alan Dugan, Mark Doty, David Ferry, Maggie Dietz, Gail Mazur, John Skoyles, Terri Cader, Carl Phillips, Robert Pinsky, Marge Piercy, Tom Sleigh, and Marie Howe.
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