Voices and Visions, documentary series on American poets

November 2, 2013 4:31 PM

“The way the poem sits on the page does not necessarily tell you anything about how to read it.” Explains Hugh Kenner of radical modernist poet and New Jersey general practitioner Williams Carlos Williams. The series features archival footage, animation, and interviews with critics, poets and and neighbors, among them Helen Vendler, Marjorie Porloff, James Merrill, and Anthony Hecht. Also, Elizabeth Bishop, Hart Crane, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman. Produced by the New York Center for Visual History, 1988. Previously

The Annenberg Media title card rings some serious nostalgia bells.

posted by zbsachs (9 comments total)

Thanks for this.

As an aspiring songwriter / poet I will review all of these and learn.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:43 PM on November 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

I really like the cadence of Wallace Stevens's neighbor's speech as she describes how she'd tell the kids nearby, as he walked to work, not to forget that he was a great poet. The interviews with the people who knew him are fun, as is, unrelatedly, James Merrill's accent.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:46 PM on November 2, 2013

zbsachs, thanks for a great first post. I haven't been able to do this resource justice yet but I have bookmarked it and will certainly enjoy it - just wanted to say thank you!
posted by madamjujujive at 11:30 AM on November 3, 2013

Thanks for this. I just checked out the Pound like a month ago on VHS. This is why I still use the VCR. Nice find zbsachs.
posted by clavdivs at 2:16 PM on November 3, 2013

Remember when these first came out and glad they are still around.

There was a PBS radio series in the early 80's with Latin American writers as it's focus, mostly the "boom" writers - Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa etc. but also others like Juan Rulfo and Clarice Lispector. The series gave biographical information, critical renderings and readings from the works. I've been looking for that series for years.
posted by incandissonance at 7:00 AM on November 4, 2013

Yeah, would also be interested in that Lispector...
posted by zbsachs at 8:29 AM on November 4, 2013

Same. With the recent revival of interest in her work, I'm surprised to hear that a series covered it in the '80s.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:44 AM on November 4, 2013

Did some research during lunch - the series on Latin American writers was called "Faces, Mirrors and Masks", was funded by NEH between 1982-84. Can't find an online version of the Lispector episode but found the show of Juan Rulfo and Jose Maria Arguedas. Here's the episode count - wish these were more readily available.

pt. 1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez : the solitude of Latin America --pt. 2. Jorge Luis Borges : the laughter of the universe -- pt. 3. Jose Maria Arguedas : the death of a dancer -- pt. 4. Guillermo Cabrera Infante : memories of an invented city -- pt. 5. Miguel Angel Asturias : the president and other myths -- pt. 6. Jorge Amado : the ballad of Bahia -- pt. 7. Carlos Fuentes : beneath the mask -- pt. 8. Luis Rafael Sanchez : life as a phenomenal thing --pt. 9. Clarice Lispector : the poetry of silence -- pt. 10. Juan Carlos Onetti : the atmosphere of a brief life -- pt. 11. Alejo Carpentier : the marvel of the real -- pt. 12. Juan Rulfo : a kind of silence -- pt. 13. Elena Poniatowska : the voice of the powerless.
posted by incandissonance at 12:13 PM on November 4, 2013

Yeah if anyone is at UC Bekerely or any of these other joints and has audacity to um. Just sayin.
posted by zbsachs at 1:02 PM on November 4, 2013 [1 favorite]