Lord knows why someone asked Bill Murray to read an Emily Dickinson poem--"I dwell in possibility"--to workers building a Poet's House in Manhattan. Occasionally his diffident, smart-ass persona lands like a cow-pie on a girder, and this was one of those times:
Murray "Reading" Dickinson
A lot of dynamics here: male Hollywood celebrity in front of male workers; actor not knowing what Dickinson's poetry is; bad idea to have him read; etc.; he thinks he's beneath the task.
So his decision was to read it like a 5th grader who's never seen poetry before, pushing a half-rhyme to be a full-rhyme as if he just discovered Dickinson uses half-rhymes.
Why?
And why not select a poem by Langston Hughes, Jim Daniels, or Philip Levine (among many others) that would have riveted, so to speak, the workers?
2 comments:
Oh, dear. I think the heavy sigh did him in before he even began. And yes, the choice of poem and poet? Really? (I know you love ED but I think you're absolutely right: audience, audience, audience.)
Speaking of--what kind of poem would you write for this audience?
I think I'd write something about "after work." So many possibilities. The thing is, the workers didn't seem opposed to the idea of poetry. Murray just caved in. Why was he there?
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