In January the Poetry Foundation picked Robert Polito—poet, professor, biographer, and critic—as its new president, following the retirement of inaugural president John Barr. We asked the brand-new boss what’s in store.
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Right now I am most excited by the staff at the foundation, and getting to know them—everyone here is so smart, talented, and steeped in poetry. Outside of our radiant new building, I want to move our national cultural conversation about poetry beyond life enrichment to include the vital close reading skills and other critically alert habits of mind that come from reading and writing it. Poetry is at once a vehicle and model for complex thinking and feeling, whether as a writer or reader, and those skills can be applied to the public sphere and everyday citizenship as well as to one’s most private experience.
The September issue of Poetry features a lively portfolio curated by Lemony Snicket. Robert Pinsky will be reading with jazz pianist Laurence Hobgood on October 10—Pinsky performs from deep inside the music, so you shouldn’t miss it. Sarah Ruhl’s Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell staged reading premieres mid-September. Watch for a bravura poetry and painting exhibition in the gallery around the turn of the year that I can’t talk about yet.
How is the Chicago poetry scene different than what you saw in New York?
