November 7, 2003 In discussing US Poet Laureate Louise Glück's private lifestyle, NY Times contributor Andrew Johnston made the following observation on recent Laureates' poetry awareness programs: "There's nothing wrong with trying to bolster an art form's public profile, but these campaigns had an air of artificial resuscitation about them that seemed only to confirm poetry's marginal status in America as something largely confined to academia, or greeting cards, or undergraduate courtship rituals. They favored poems easily digested and easily forgotten, poems that seemed to feel obliged to thank you for your time by sending you away with a warm little glow." Hmm. Declaring poetry self-obsessed at universities and trivial outside them is not a new comment. What's new to me is thinking that acting as if poetry is NOT self-obsessed somehow proves that poetry IS self-obsessed. And recursive in a compiler-crashing way. And just plain wrong. Two of the programs Johnston refers to are Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project and Collins' Poetry 180. Let's consider these independently. According to its website, the Favorite Poem Project (FPP) ("Americans Saying the Poems They Love") has inspired over 1,000 readings of other people's poetry. This is important, as many poetry readings are attended primarily by narcissists and aspiring Bukowkskis who couldn't be less interested in receiving poetry - they are only interested in you receiving their poetry. Rather than resuscitative, I would say FPP's impact has been unrestrictive, freeing people to speak openly about poems they've kept tacked to their refrigerators for years but thought no one else would be interested in. Rather than promoting the "easily digested and easily forgotten", FPP celebrates the poems that people have bonded with and kept near them for years. Poetry 180's stated purpose includes this marvelous thought: "Hearing a poem every day, especially well-written, contemporary poems that students do not have to analyze, might convince students that poetry can be an understandable, painless and even eye-opening part of their everyday experience." Again, I find this freeing: the concept that you should enjoy poetry rather than understand it. While this acknowledges the "academic" influence on poetry appreciation, its goal is to show people that poetry doesn't have to be that way. It’s proclaiming the page more important than the footnote. I find "understandable, painless and even eye-opening" the opposite of "sending you away with a warm little glow". By the way, if you've never read Collins' "Introduction to Poetry", you're missing the seminal statement of this perspective. The point of Johnston's article was to celebrate Glück's attention to the poems themselves, to the utility found in their introspections. He concludes, "If you don't know yourself, her poems imply, how can you begin to imagine what other people need?" How about by reading them some poems and seeing which ones cause the colors in their eyes to change?