The position at the Library of Congress has existed under different names since the nineteen thirties. The current poet laureate is W.S. Merwin.

FAITH LAPIDUS: Robert Pinsky is proud that something he started called the Favorite Poem Project is still popular. That project invites everyday people to introduce a poem that is meaningful to them, and then read it on video.

The videos can be found online at favoritepoem.org.

In one video, a United States Marine officer named Steve Conteaguero reads a poem. He reads "Politics" by William Butler Yeats, who died in nineteen thirty-nine.

STEVE CONTEAGUERO:

How can I, that girl standing there,

My attention fix

On Roman or on Russian

Or on Spanish politics?

Yet here’s a travelled man that knows

What he talks about.

And there’s a politician

That has read and thought.

And maybe what they say is true

Of war and war’s alarms.

But O that I were young again

And held her in my arms!

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: A new collection of selected poems by Robert Pinsky will be published in April. Here he is reading part of a poem first published in nineteen ninety-nine. The poem is called "Samurai Song."

ROBERT PINSKY:

When I had no roof I made

Audacity my roof. When I had

No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.

When I had no ears I thought.