At its best, poetry "holds the unsayable," employing words in new ways to express the "power of what the mind can conjure up." In the eight-episode first season of this PBS-aired series directed by Harvard English professor Elisa New, academics, poets, politicians, and relevant professionals are brought together, weighing in on classic, modern, and neglected poems. Highlights include an Emily Dickinson work, discussed and recited by actress Cynthia Nixon, who portrayed Dickinson in the film A Quiet Passion. Although private almost to the point of being a recluse, Dickinson relished being a rebel poet with an edge, challenging norms with jagged forms and punctuation. Carl Sandburg’s "Skyscraper" expresses his double vision as poet and journalist, capturing a big city’s dissonance, celebrating both its outsized scale and beauty, while also lamenting its human cost. Former President Bill Clinton draws on his southern heritage to appreciate Langston Hughes’s poetic meditation on a "dream deferred," while former Vice President Joe Biden taps his working-class roots to interpret Robert Hayden’s great and overlooked "Those Winter Sundays," and the late Sen. John McCain recalls his POW experiences, discussing Gwendolyn Brooks’s "To Prisoners." Also covered are the world of sports ("Fast Break"), fashion ("Shirt"), rap (written by "disciples of the streets"), the Beat generation, and Emma Lazarus’s powerful ode to immigration "The New Colossus," found at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Not all poems here will please everyone’s taste, but most discussions will leave viewers hungry to go back and rediscover these works. Essential for high school and college literature classes, as well as anyone who simply loves poetry, this is highly recommended. Editor’s Choice. Aud: H, C, P. (S. Rees)
Poetry in America: Season 1
(2017) 2 discs. 305 min. DVD: $39.99 ($69.99 w/PPR). PBS Video. SDH captioned. ISBN: 978-1-5317-0870-2. Volume 34, Issue 3
Poetry in America: Season 1
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