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From: Lisa New
Sent: 12/2/2015 3:17:58 PM
To: Jeffrey Epstein [jeeyacation@gmail.com]
Subject: Poetry Update and Thank You
Importance: High
Dear Jeffrey,
May I drop by before the New Year (perhaps on the 9th, or on the 17th or 18th?) to get your advice
about my renewal of the Templeton campaign, and also my needs in the coming year for Poetry in
America? Below is the letter I'm sending out to my friends and supporters, and at the bottom a
message just for you....
-Lisa
That you are receiving this letter means that you are among a special community of friends whose
support— financial, moral, intellectual, logistical— has allowed my initiative, Poetry in America, to
realize what seemed, a year ago, almost certainly too ambitious a vision. That vision was to
produce the highest quality educational video on American poetry, creating a body of
humanities content capable of reaching a broad community of learners: formal and informal,
online and residential, young and old, American and international. And it was to
begin— rapidly— to disseminate and distribute our work.
Whether you donated to Poetry in America through Filmmaker's Collaborative (our 501c3 fiscal
sponsor), through Harvard, or through WGBH; whether you appeared on camera or talked an elusive
friend into appearing on camera to discuss a poem; whether you lent us your film crew, or provided
overnight use of your hotel suite or apartment or of your whole skyscraper; whether you highlighted
our work on your stage, or talked your colleagues into becoming corporate sponsors; whether you
flew to Boston to install state-of-the-art editing and video storage equipment, or asked your children's
school to let us film there; whether you encouraged your family foundation to take an interest in the
project, or gave us a lesson in IP, in licensing, in the rudiments of finance, or of distribution; whether
you praised, or gave timely, much-needed criticism— you enabled what we have done.
Here's what we have to report, and to show, a year later, thanks to your help. Links offer sneak peeks
of works -in-progress across the full portfolio of Poetry in America projects.
• The first eight-episode season of the public television series Poetry in America (a co-
production between WGBH, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker David Grubin, and my own new
production company, Verse Video), is now fully funded and in production, with episodes featuring Bill
Clinton, Herbie Hancock and Sonia Sanchez on Langston Hughes, Frank Gehry on Carl Sandburg,
Katie Couric on Elizabeth Bishop, Nas on Whitman, and many more scheduled for nationwide launch
in 2017.
• Poetry in America's many initiatives to reach Middle and High School teachers and their
students are taking root. Our first online course for Middle and High School Teachers, Poetry of
the City, will launch this Spring with the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Companion
materials to this course will be made available for free on PBS LearningMedia. This course is
designed to meet the needs of English Language Arts and Social Studies teachers in the US and
internationally.
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• We are eager to begin production of The Poetry of Earth, Sea, and Sky. Designed, too, for
Middle and High School teachers, The Poetry of Earth, Sea, and Sky will draw English Language Arts
instruction into dialogue with science, and will include extraordinary footage of the natural world,
conversations with poets, scholars, and scientists as well as footage shot in class and in the field with
great teachers.
• A recent partnership with Greenwich Country Day School and the Success Academy Network
of charter schools will provide a base for the production of a new collection of classroom-ready
educational material on The Poetry of Art Sport, and Play. This collection will include discussions
on poems filmed everywhere from sports fields to Broadway theaters, and will feature dancers,
athletes, fashion designers, and more.
• With a growing archive of footage capturing teachers and students reading American poems,
we are eager to expand our reach and move into America's schools, disseminating, testing,
and learning from teachers and students using our materials. We hope to be able to begin work
evaluating the impact of poetry on literacy levels and character development and, eventually, to
produce a full suite of materials that foster character development along with intellectual growth.
Working closely with such partners as The Nantucket Project, Nautilus Magazine, The Aspen Ideas
Festival, and The Big Think, and, of course, HarvardX, Harvard's provider of free open online
courses, we are continuing to create rich educational media on poetry for adult learners and
lifelong learners. These materials include short form videos such as this one on Robert Pinsky's
"Shirt" (as featured in The New Yorker), and, this spring, the sixth module of the free seven-part
Poetry in America MOOC, which has registrants in over 150 countries.
Growing rapidly, and outpacing our current staff and infrastructure, Poetry in America has a
fundraising goal this year of 2.5 million dollars to fund its expanding group of projects. We've taken a
big step, hiring the design agency Threespot to help us develop our web presence. Our website— to
launch early 2016— will eventually serve as an online hub for our TV show and educational projects.
We hope you'll join us then for a virtual launch!
Finally, Jeffrey, you have been such a wonderful supporter of my Poetry in America project. The Leon
Black gift changed everything for me last year. It paid salaries for staff I desperately needed to
complete projects (detail below), but first and foremost, it gave me leverage, enabling me to set down
a solid Harvard base for my activities by giving the school something to point to: this public
humanities project among the list of projects the Dean supports. The money did it: as soon as they
heard about the gift, they took my project more seriously. Because of that gift, the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences, which is space-stingy, found and rewired a studio space for me to house my video
production operation and team. That gift woke up the Deans to the importance of Harvard's role in
producing the highest quality humanities content for the WORLD, and not just for Harvard students.
My main employee has half of her salary paid with these funds, and the foundation of our collection
for PBS LeamingMedia is being made with this support. This gift represented one of the most
consequential shifts of the last year, allowing me create content and launch projects this year that
make future projects that much more likely. If I can keep this base sturdy at Harvard, refilling these
coffers, I will be that much more able to keep working.
I am also so grateful for the help you gave me in defining my project for Templeton, and, what help
you have offered to give in bringing them around. I have, since Templeton turned me down, gotten
funding to produce video on two of the poems I'd proposed to Templeton and to create, and test, that
video in schools as I proposed. One of my partners in that project is Success Academy, where I could
also expand my work with Templeton. And there are still other poems that may satisfy their character
criteria more fully, including the third of the poems I'd originally proposed and that Joe Biden had
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agreed to discuss with me (on parenthood and humility). At this point, I'm gaining the platform and the
name recognition to be an effective spokesperson for the foundation on building literacy and
character in the schools.
It really means a lot to me, all financial help aside, Jeffrey, that you are rooting for me and thinking
about me. You push back a lot (as Larry does), and it's always annoying but I always learn.
With abundant gratitude,
Lisa
Elisa New
Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature
Harvard University
148 Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA
02138
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