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The Boston Globe OnlineBoston.com Boston Globe Online / Living | Arts / Cyberlinks
At this site, everyone's a poet; cool things

By Patti Hartigan, Globe Staff, 02/19/99

In his preface to ''Leaves of Grass,'' Walt Whitman declared, ''The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.'' No doubt, that great champion of democracy would have sung the song of the Internet. Now there's a Web site, www.favoritepoem.org, that proves that poetry in cyberspace is not a contradiction in terms.

We're not just talking about printed text, static words on a screen. We're talking about a Roxbury minister reciting Longfellow and recalling a time when the news of his death was greatly exaggerated. We're talking about a native of Alaska reading a poem that pulled her through a long winter's depression. We're talking about human connection of the most intimate -- albeit technological -- kind.

Launched last Sunday, the site is the on-line extension of poet laureate Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project. Pinsky, a Boston University professor, started the project in 1997, and it was decidedly low-tech at first. He planned to have a former student wander around Washington, asking tourists to read poems into a portable tape recorder. Good ideas have a way of growing, though, and within a year, folks from all over were sending Pinsky their favorite poems, which will be archived at the Library of Congress next year.

Last April, Pinsky sponsored poetry events in five cities, including Boston. Ordinary citizens shared the podium with politicians and other public figures: homemakers and homeless citizens, choreographers and corporate executives were united through meter and verse. And now their voices can be heard by millions via streaming audio and video.

''We want, put it this way, to reach a wide net,'' Pinsky said the other day. ''Poetry is a bodily act; it's also intellectual and emotional, but it involves a voice that comes out of a body. The Web makes it possible to hear in the voice the nature of the attachment between the person and the poem.''

The monitor serves as a sort of electronic salon. Listen to Bridgit Stearns reciting ''Not Waving But Drowning'' by Stevie Smith, explaining how the poem illustrated her depression. It also inspired hope. ''It has a little bit of a tone of defiance and bravery and a chirpiness. . . . It encouraged me to keep thrashing and to keep waving. It helped me.''

Watch Bill T. Jones, that philosopher of dance, choreograph his favorite poem on the small screen of your media player. See third-grade teacher Che Hairston perform a piece by Langston Hughes in American Sign Language, hands speaking through air.

''None of them are the artist. None of them are the expert,'' Pinsky says. ''Yet they take the risk of saying 'I love this poem.' This phenomenon has to do with community.''

The Web site brings poetic pictures to the masses, creating what Pinsky calls ''a large-scale time capsule.'' Years from now, you'll be able to hear the voice of Rev. Michael E. Haynes, the Roxbury minister who designed his gravestone while awaiting surgery back in 1989. He survived, but the cemetery mistakenly put the gravestone on his plot, and for a while folks whispered about his death. That marker is inscribed with his favorite poem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's ''A Psalm of Life.'' This couplet sums up the spirit of the site: ''And departing, leave behind us / Footsteps in the sands of time.''


Pinsky is a people's poet; Andrew Collins, on the other hand, is a pop-culture junkie. Director of creative content at Thingworld.com, he ''drives traffic and commerce opportunities in unique ways through compelling digital content.''

Translation: He makes cool stuff.

And what exactly does he make? Well, things called Things. In ad-speak, Things are ''memorable, interactive, and surprising user experiences optimized for today's bandwidth.'' In the words of Collins, they ''allow brand owners a tamperproof way to leverage their assets on line.''

Translation: Things are cool. They're also marketing tools.

A Thing is an interactive screen image that changes when you click on it with your mouse. Here's an example from the Comedy Central Web site: See Chef Aid from ''South Park.'' Put your mouse on the image, and he talks: ''Hello there, children.'' Click, and he sings: ''I'm gonna make love to you, woman.'' Things are digital tchotchkes, electronic ephemera. Fans can download them and put them on their own home pages, but they have a built-in link back to Comedy Central's site.

Newton-based Thingworld.com recently won ''Innovation of the Year'' from the folks at ''Cool Site of the Day.'' In addition to Comedy Central, Thingworld.com has developed electronic nifties for the New England Patriots and the World Wrestling Federation; Hasbro Toys and Curious George; David Bowie and Nintendo's Zelda.

The technology allows media moguls to spread their copyright images among fans while maintaining a link to their own domains. ''If you shut out your fan base, you're doing yourself a huge disservice,'' Collins says.

Collins, 30, knows he fits the stereotype of an interactive media guy. As a pop-culture junkie, he's his own best customer. ''I sort of ooze into the room on this job, and people think, 'Oh, here's a goofy fan.' '' A pause. ''Isn't it cool?''


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