Question: Is hip-hop poetry?

Robert Pinsky: I don’t -- I am not interested in making real strict lines about what is
poetry and what isn’t poetry. For me a crucial thing about poetry, as it means the most to
me is that it is written for anybody’s voice in a culture in which we worship performers,
in which performance is our aristocracy, much better than the old aristocracy, much
better to idolize somebody because they can throw ball like hell or run like hell because
they are beautiful and sing wonderfully or dance wonderfully than because their the great,
great, great grandson of some of some big shot much better. But we do worship it and
here is an ancient art that is based on the reader’s voice. That’s one reason The Favorite
Poem Project is so important to me.

If some kid comes to poetry in that sense through performance, of course that’s a very
natural and it’s very natural that at first you do things that ape what is so powerful in the
culture. You imitate what is being turned out very, very effectively and very powerfully
and I think performances can be great art. I just make a distinction between an art in
which the medium is the audience’s body.

When I said that Ben Johnson poem to you or say the Landor poem to you when I say:
On love, on grief, on everything human thing, time sprinkles Lethe’sWater with his wing
It’s not like an amateur singing tune by the real pop artist. That’s the combination of
work of art. It’s when someone other than the artist gives voice to it and that’s different.
It’s different than performance and both can be stupid. Both can be great art, but I do
make a distinction between the art of the performer and the art of the poet. I don’t write
poetry readings. If I give one, I try not to be boring, but I write poems. I write with my
voice for your voice.