America In Portrait; With A Feminine Touch

These two programs compiled from the highly acclaimed public television series Anyone for Tennyson? attempt to bring the pleasure of poetry to a wider audience. The first title, America in Portrait is the more successful of the two. James Whitmore, Henry Fonda, and William Shatner, together with the members of the Poetry Quartet deliver fine renditions of some of the more popular poems by Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Langston Hughes, Katharine Lee Bates, and Chaucer. More often than not, the poems offer a view on some facet of the American character, with some excellent poems illustrating the historical plight of Black and Native Americans. Usually the poems are accompanied by a brief historical sketch of the poet, and some comments about the poems themselves. The second title With a Feminine Touch focuses on famous women poets, such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, the Bronte sisters, and Sylvia Plath, as read by Valerie Harper, Claire Bloom, and the Poetry Quartet. Neither the visual settings nor the background information on the poets is on a par with the first program. Bloom performs many poems in a single setting, beginning one right after the other with no indication as to whether a different poem is being read or even one by a different poetess. And frankly, many viewers will be less than enthralled by the straightforward poems of Millay and the Brontes. The program does come alive, however, with the finale, which features the cutting, bitter poetry of Plath. One wishes the editors had spent a little more time making sure the programs' continuity would ensure that audiences would stick around for what many consider to be a tedious bore: wonderful poetry. Because the first title is better arranged, and the poems better chosen, it is recommended. The second, however, is an optional purchase. (Available from most distributors.)