Rubin develops Washington symposium

In the works for almost two years, the symposium brings together academics and poets from around the country for panel presentations and even a reading from Dante's Divine Comedy featuring the Italian ambassador. It has been planned in conjunction with Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's presentation of his "Favorite Poem" archive to the Library of Congress. Pinsky also will discuss contemporary American poetry with fellow award-winning poets Rita Dove, Louise Glück, and W.S. Merwin.

The Favorite Poem Project is a video and audio archive of thousands of Americans reciting the poems they love and speaking briefly about the poems' meaning in their lives.

Rubin's contact with Pinsky began in 1998 when fellow history faculty member Celia Applegate alerted her to Pinsky's project after hearing about it on public radio. She encouraged Rubin to contact the Poet Laureate about her own work as a cultural historian, which includes research of the status and uses of poetry reading in America between 1880 and 1950. She has been examining the settings where poetry was read--in the home, at school, even around the campfire--and how the site affected its interpretation and the emotions of the reader or listener.

Rubin asked James Longenbach, Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English, who knows Pinsky through his own work as a poet and literary critic, to pave the way for contacting the Poet Laureate. When she spoke to Pinsky she found him "very open. He's the perfect Poet Laureate because he is so democratic," she said. "He was just very interested in what I was doing and very enthusiastic about the idea of the symposium. He encouraged me to organize it."

The goal of the symposium, Rubin explained, is to examine poetry reading historically and to underscore the importance of assembling archives such as the one Pinsky has created.

Rubin is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and is a coeditor of the series A History of the Book in America. She is a member of the American Antiquarian Society and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of American History and the University of Massachusetts Press's Studies in Print Culture and The History of the Book.

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