Moyers' Favorite Poem Project

The site of the television program, Bill Moyers Journal, has a favorite-poem project going. Lots of interesting choices.

Timeline of Insurance

Only 610 years, approximately, after the concept of insurance arose (at least in a European context), the U.S. Congress seems poised--if that's the word--to get more people health insurance, or at least that's the claim, as it were. Here is a link to a time-line of insurance. Exciting reading.

South Dakota's Poet Laureate

As noted earlier, Larry Woiwode is North Dakota's Poet Laureate. Who is South Dakota's? I'm glad you asked. David Allen Evans, whose books include Bull Rider's Advice: New And Selected Poems (2003).

Anne Spencer

Here is a link to a page about a not-so-well known Harlem Renaissance poet, Anne Spencer.

"Photography Is Poetry"

Here's a cool site: Photography Is Poetry.

Films About Poets

One problem with trying to make a dramatic feature film about poets is that most of the drama in a poet's life occurs in his or her head. A second problem, flowing out of the first, is that the film-makers then try to compensate by focusing on sordid details or on cliche aspects of the alleged "poet's life," such as drinking alcohol, being wild, yadda yadda. A third problem is that, probably, no one should try to "dramatize" the writing process. All of that said, here is a list of movies about poets, pretty much in the order they occurred to me, although I do begin with my favorite:

1. Stevie (1978) It presents her life and doesn't try too hard to dramatize poetry and poets.
2. Priest of Love (1981) About D.H. Lawrence. Not bad. Ava Gardner has a role.
3. The Edge of Love (2008) About Dylan Thomas. Falls into some of the traps mentioned above.
4. Dead Poets Society (1989). A favorite of many. More about poetry and teaching than poets. I liked it all right.
5. Panaemondium (2000)About Wordsworth and other British Romantic poets. The scenes that try to portray Wordsworth composing are painful to watch. The stuff about literary politics and Wordsworth's ego is good.
6. Beat (2000). Focuses mainly on Burroughs. It's pretty good.
7. Looking for Langston (1988) Quasi-documentary stressing Hughes's sexuality. A fine film--but it really is only about one aspect of Hughes's life, alas.
8. Total Eclipse (1995) Concerning Rimbaud and Verlaine. Very good. With Dicaprio.
9. Dr. Zhivago (1965). Of course, this movie about a lot besides poetry, but the main character is a poet, after all.
10. Beautiful Dreamers (1990). This is the one among the 10 I haven't seen, but it looks intriguing. It's about Walt Whitman. Not great reviews on IMDB, alas.

Working Theater Collective, Portland

I recently met a member of the Working Theater Collective in Portland, Oregon. Their current production is Peaking, and here is a link to the WTC's blog. I wish I'd had time to attend a performance; maybe this summer....If you live in or near Portland and haven't check them out, please do so.

Simon Armitage

Here is a link to the site of Simon Armitage, a contemporary British poet whom the BBC sent to Afghanistan. His "poem of the day" today is "Ten Pence Story," a rhyming narrative poem spoken, as it were, by a coin.

Theatre of the Absurd

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Theatrics


There’s no theatre that’s not
theatre of the absurd because
in every case humans sit
observing humans acting
like humans.... Everybody
in the whole building
has a task, which both is
and is not what brought each
task’s respective human
to the building. The building
is a product of earlier innumerable
tasks. So is the play. All tasks
are ultimately meaningless maybe.
So is the play. The theatre-
building is filled with pretending
humans watching other humans
pretending, and this is reality,
and this is play, and if God
doesn’t exist, then none of it
means anything ultimately,
and if God does exist, then
does the play mean what it purports
to mean? Oh, and one additional absurd
thing is how ordered, dutiful,
polite, and amused we are as
we perform our tasks. We play
the game of As If as if it
weren’t a game, and that is
acting, and that’s absurd,
and that’s another good reason
to go see a play played live.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Stevie Smith

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Stevie Smith is one of my favorite 20th century poets. Her work is whimsical but tough, quirky but accessible. She also wrote prose and drew. Glenda Jackson portrayed her memorably in the film, "Stevie," which also featured Trevor Howard, if memory serves. Perhaps Smith's most famous poem is "Not Waving But Drowning." Here is a link to more information about Smith and her work.

Eventual, Uncertain Results: The Teacher's Circumstance

Builders, meat-cutters, plumbers, electricians, surgeons, and so on, usually get to see the results of their labor and expertise relatively quickly.

Teachers are among those who may not see the fruits of their work right away and who, indeed, can never be certain about what effect they have had.

I'm thinking about this because I traveled to Portland to read some poems to some alumni from the college where I have taught for quite a while, and simply to chat with the alums. (I insisted on titling the evening "Just Enough Poems," conscious that poetry in general and my poetry in particular may be an acquired taste.) I'd not had some of them in class; others had taken one or more classes from me.

--An impressive group, and to back up "impressive," one is tempted to name occupations: doctor, wine-maker, pub-owner, drama-teacher, parent, businessperson, etc. But more impressive is the sense one has that these are good and complicated people--thoughtful, well read, responsible, intellectually adventurous.

Many of them still write--as they are fulfilling other responsibilities and pursuing other professions. That is impressive. Also, these sorts of writers--the ones who are not famous (yet), the ones for whom writing is just one piece of the puzzle--may be more crucial to a culture than the writers on whom all the light is shed.

--But back to the original thread: a teacher a) often has to wait decades, not just years, to have some sense of what effect he or she may have had on students and b) still cannot and indeed should not be tempted to take credit. There is rarely any way to prove that one's teaching led to any student's impressiveness. That is as it should be, not just because this circumstance reins in a teacher's pride, but also because the circumstance reminds a teacher that teach8ing is an art and an act of faith.

Nonetheless, the alumni I talked with and read poems to are impressive in the right ways. They are decent, smart, accomplished people. They are nobody's fools. To be nobody's fool is one great potential result of education, in my opinion--and a result the teacher should be reticent to claim credit for.

Powell's Books

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A journey to Portland (Oregon) is in my near future, so I will try to make the obligatory pilgrimage to Powell's Books, which famously takes up a city block. Bibliophiles can get figuratively lost in bookstores of any size, but in Powell's one may literally get lost in one of the book-alleys on one of the floors.

Apparently Powell's was founded in 1971: relatively, not that old.

For amusement and edification, I used "poetry" as the keyword in an online Powell's search, and the number of titles that came up was 71,448.

Sundance Apple Tree

It's one thing to say you believe in God; that is a statement of faith. It's another to plant a fruit tree; that, too, is a statement of faith (as well as an allusion to Eden), if of a different sort.

My father liked to plant fruit trees--in a disorderly fashion. He just picked spots on his acre of land and planted. Some of the trees were grouped together, but that seemed to be by accident. He had very good luck with apple trees. One became enormous, and then one late autumn a bear broke down many limbs going for the last apples. My father liked bears even more than apple trees, however, so he was cool with it.

He seemed extremely partial to a variety of apple called "the Arkansas black," which was really a deep red (apple). Smallish, but kept well. Nice for pies.

He had less success with the apricot and hazelnut trees. No wonder: his acre lay at 4,000 feet-plus in the Sierra Nevada.

All of this is by way of saying that I planted my second Sundance Apple tree today. I planted one last year. And I planted my first one about five years ago--at a different place; it should be producing heavily now. So it goes. Planters of trees often plant for others. The Sundance is a disease-resistant hybrid, and I get the dwarf variety. It's crisp, a bit tart, and certainly not too sweet.

Fruit trees: statement of faith, labor of love--almost like poetry.