Today's Fredlines: March 5, 2009 Archive

A poem-to-be, getting closer

Posted at 6:42 PM on March 5, 2009 by Fred Child (1 Comments)

I love that C.K. Williams is so willing. Even if he's a little anxious about the whole thing.

Mr. Williams is a Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, he teaches at Princeton. Which means he certainly didn't have to take this gig.

But he did. And in a week, he will start writing a poem for us. Based on music you choose.

We have five nominees, pieces by Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Beethoven, Ravel, and Peter Maxwell Davies. You can hear highlights from the nominees and cast your vote on our "Notes to Verse" page. Voting goes through next Friday, the 13th.

(Will it skew the voting if I tell you where things stand? Beethoven has nosed ahead of Maxwell Davies, but playing the Berlioz on the air Friday may change everything. Stop calculating your vote based on this, just go listen and vote.)

You can also hear my conversation with CK Williams about our project on the "Notes to Verse" page. Or what the heck, just click here.

C.K. Williams will join me for an update on how the poem is coming later this month. And he'll read his finished work on Performance Today on April 1, the beginning of National Poetry Month.

For more about CK Williams, check out his profile here, on the Poetry Foundation website.

Here's a 2006 New York Times review of Williams' "Collected Poems."

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