Harvard Has Appointed Herbie Hancock as the 2014 Norton Professor of Poetry, Following in the Footsteps of Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot

Legendary jazz musician Herbie Hancock has been appointed by Harvard University as the 2014 Norton Professor of Poetry. With that honor, Hancock will deliver six lectures, each with a different subject, but the 73-year-old Oscar-winning composer told the BBC they will "be mainly talking about my own experience and give them some stories."

Hancock plans to incorporate the message of Buddhism, which he has practiced over the past four decades. He also has a lecture planned titled "The Wisdom of Miles Davis." He played with Davis in the '60s.

The honorary professorship at Harvard began in 1925, and since then Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot and Leonard Bernstein have taken on the influential role. Even though Hancock clearly has a lot of wisdom to share in the lecture series, he did tell BBC that following Bernstein is "pretty daunting."

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