Senior Women Web
Image: Women Dancing
Image: Woman with Suitcase
Image: Women with Bicycle
Image: Women Riveters
Image: Women Archers
Image: Woman Standing

Culture & Arts button
Relationships & Going Places button
Home & Shopping button
Money & Computing button
Health, Fitness & Style button
News & Issues button

Help  |  Site Map


Culture and Arts

Culture Watch

And Consider This

The Favorite Poem Project was founded in 1997 as an initiative by former Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky. Eighteen thousand Americans shared their favorite poems and a number of those now reside on the Project site's database, such as

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer by Walt Whitman:

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Or this:

from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection:
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

For those of you who have a poem to contribute to the Project, it's not too late to do so.

Poetry in Motion invites readers to create a poem from the selection of words presented at their site. Each entry will be time stamped at the exact second that it is received and each day, a random time (to the second) is chosen for the previous day's entries. The 21 entries closest to the random time are then judged by a panel of editors who select the $100.00 gift certificate winner. Poetry.com also dedicates a section to the '100 Greatest Poems Ever Written.'

© 2003 Tam Martinides Gray for SeniorWomenWeb
Share:
  
  
  
  
Follow Us:

+ Increase font size | - Decrease font size
Reset font size | Help



home
Follow Us:

back

About Us | Sponsors | Site Map | SWW Gift Shop | Letters | Feedback

SeniorWomenWeb, an Uncommon site for Uncommon Women ™ (http://www.seniorwomen.com) 1999-2024