Sounds of Poetry with Bill Moyers

Distributed by Films Media Group, PO Box 2053, Princeton, New Jersey 08543-2053; 800-257-5126Produced by Films for the Humanities and SciencesDirector n/a1999, VHS, 4 videos, 27 min. each The four videos reviewed here are part of a larger project Bill Moyers did for PBS in which he interviewed contemporary poets and presented them reading their own poetry. All of the footage was filmed during the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo Village, New Jersey. The formula for each video is the same: the viewer hears a brief biography of the featured poet, and readings by that poet are intercut with fragments of an interview with Moyers. In each case Moyers, in a short 27 minutes, is able to reveal some of the more salient aspects of the poet's style and literary themes. Moyers is an astute guide who remains mostly in the background and allows the poets to reveal themselves through their poetry and commentary. He peruses questions that are particular to each poet, such as the importance of the physical encounter with poetry for Robert Pinsky, or how poetry allowed Lorna Dee Cervantes to escape her stifling childhood as a California Indian Chicana from the welfare class. Through these brief snippets of conversation the viewer learns how vitally important, and in some cases literally life saving, the act of writing and reading poetry is to these artists. These videos would be quite useful in a junior high or high school setting to introduce students to some of the major English-language poets of our day.