If you do not have a ticket to Chicago for this week’s sold out AWP conference, don’t fret. Now is your chance to catch up on poetry in another medium: film. Here are six suggestions to hold you over:
Poetry - This beautifully sprawling film touches not only on poetry, but Alzheimer’s, identity, and morality, with moments so real and original, they’re uncanny. Chang-dong Lee (2010).
To Be Heard - Called one of the best documentaries of 2010 by the New York Times, the film follows three Bronx teens transforming their lives with poetry. “If you don’t learn to write your own life story, someone else will write it for you.” Amy Sulton (2010).
In Henry Fool, Garbageman Simon Grim picks up some inspiration from a “talent-less” novelist, becomes a celebrity poet, and bags Parker Posey. Hal Harley (1997).
Total Eclipse - Join Leonardo DiCaprio as French poet Arthur Rimbaud in his “turbulent and absinthe-soaked relationship” with poet Paul Verlaine. Agnieszka Holland (1995).
Le Quattro Volte – “This visual poem brings to life Pythagoras’s theory that the soul moves from human to animal to vegetable to mineral in its evolutionary journey. Wordlessly, the film follows an elderly Italian goat herder as he makes the remarkable transition… into a baby goat, a giant tree and a lump of coal (Netflix).” Michelangelo Frammartino (2010).
For some lighter fare, pine for Mike Myer’s golden days and get some ideas for your next multi-media poetry performance by watching So I Married an Axe Murderer. Thomas Schlamme (1993).
–Stephanie Ann Whited
