Poetry Update and Thank You
[{"sender": "Lisa New", "recipients": ["Jeffrey Epstein [jeevacation@gmail.com]"], "timestamp": "12/2/2015 3:17:58 PM", "subject": "Poetry Update and Thank You", "body": "Dear Jeffrey,\n\nMay | drop by before the New Year (perhaps on the 9th, or on the 17th or 18th?) to get your advice\nabout my renewal of the Templeton campaign, and also my needs in the coming year for Poetry in\nAmerica? Below is the letter I'm sending out to my friends and supporters, and at the bottom a\nmessage just for you....\n\n-Lisa\n\nThat you are receiving this letter means that you are among a special community of friends whose\nsupport— financial, moral, intellectual, logistical— has allowed my initiative, Poetry in America, to\nrealize what seemed, a year ago, almost certainly too ambitious a vision. That vision was to\nproduce the highest quality educational video on American poetry, creating a body of\nhumanities content capable of reaching a broad community of learners: formal and informal,\nonline and residential, young and old, American and international. And it was to\n\nbegin— rapidly— to disseminate and distribute our work.\n\nWhether you donated to Poetry in America through Filmmaker’s Collaborative (our 501c3 fiscal\nsponsor), through Harvard, or through WGBH; whether you appeared on camera or talked an elusive\nfriend into appearing on camera to discuss a poem; whether you lent us your film crew, or provided\novernight use of your hotel suite or apartment or of your whole skyscraper; whether you highlighted\nour work on your stage, or talked your colleagues into becoming corporate sponsors; whether you\nflew to Boston to install state-of-the-art editing and video storage equipment, or asked your children’s\nschool to let us film there; whether you encouraged your family foundation to take an interest in the\nproject, or gave us a lesson in IP, in licensing, in the rudiments of finance, or of distribution; whether\nyou praised, or gave timely, much-needed criticism— you enabled what we have done.\n\nHere’s what we have to report, and to show, a year later, thanks to your help. Links offer sneak peeks\nof works -in-progress across the full portfolio of Poetry in America projects.\n\n° The first eight-episode season of the public television series Poetry in America (a co-\nproduction between WGBH, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker David Grubin, and my own new\nproduction company, Verse Video), is now fully funded and in production, with episodes featuring Bill\nClinton, Herbie Hancock and Sonia Sanchez _on Langston Hughes, Frank Gehry on Carl Sandburg,\nKatie Couric on Elizabeth Bishop, Nas on Whitman, and many more scheduled for nationwide launch\nin 2017.\n\ne Poetry in America’s many initiatives to reach Middle and High School teachers and their\nstudents are taking root. Our first online course for Middle and High School Teachers, Poetry of\nthe City, will launch this Spring with the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Companion\nmaterials to this course will be made available for free on PBS LearningMedia. This course is\ndesigned to meet the needs of English Language Arts and Social Studies teachers in the US and\ninternationally."}]