the following is presented without comment as a public, er, warning.....



In a message dated 7/30/99 11:06:59 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<<
 >From: [log in to unmask]
 >To: [log in to unmask]
 >Subject: Press Release for FOOLING WITH WORDS WITH BILL MOYERS
 >Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 11:01:22 EDT
 >
 >FOOLING WITH WORDS WITH BILL MOYERS
 >Captures the Vitality and Diversity of Contemporary Poetry
 >at America's Largest Poetry Festival
 >Premiering Sunday, September 26 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS
 >
 >"The act of making a poem requires that somebody's listening," says poet
 >Mark
 >Doty. And listen they do. More than 12,000 people turned up to listen and
 >laugh, to sigh and weep, to cheer and exalt in the pure pleasure of the
 >spoken word at the 1998 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, where Bill
 >Moyers
 >returned to cover the poetry beat. The two-hour special FOOLING WITH WORDS
 >WITH BILL MOYERS, produced by Dominique Lasseur and directed by Catherine
 >Tatge, premieres Sunday, September 26 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local
 >listings). "Under the trees in Waterloo, New Jersey, in this picturesque
 >corner of America, the sound and taste and texture of words tumble off the
 >stage. It's a celebration of the spirit that I find irresistible," says
 >Moyers.
 >
 >"They call it a festival, but it's more like a carnival… and you're the
 >ride," says poet Kurtis Lamkin, who captivates the crowd with his tapestry
 >of
 >joyful sights and sounds of African-American urban street life. From big
 >tents to small workshops, people throng to hear some of the best poets in
 >America and share their thoughts on the craft of poetry. Surveying the
 >sunny
 >atmosphere of young and old reading and speaking poetry together, Georgia
 >poet Coleman Barks, remarks, "It's amazing that so many people can be
 >genuinely excited about fooling with words."
 >
 >Doty, Lamkin, and Barks, along with Amiri Baraka, Stanley Kunitz, Jane
 >Hirshfeld, Deborah Garrison, Lucille Clifton, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Galway
 >Kinnell, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, and Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky are among
 >the
 >two dozen poets who share the rhythm, spirit and passion of their work on
 >stage and off in conversations with Bill Moyers.
 >
 >Leaning against a wooden bridge over a brook, or sitting in one of the
 >small
 >stone houses scattered across Waterloo Village, Moyers probes the poets
 >about
 >the intimate process of making their experiences into art. How did you
 >find
 >your voice? How did you start? How did you translate your emotions into
 >poetry, what is a good poem?
 >
 >"A good poem" says Jane Hirshfield, "takes something you already know as a
 >human being and raises your ability to feel that to a higher degree so you
 >can know your own life more intensely. When you meet your own life in a
 >great poem, your life becomes
 >expanded, extended, clarified, magnified, deeper in color, deeper in
 >feeling.
 > I feel like almost all I know about being a human being has been deepened
 >by
 >the poems I've read. They have taught me how to be a human being."
 >
 >For Lorna Dee Cervantes, the idea that "I can write" offered freedom she
 >had
 >never known. "When you grow up as I did, a Chican-India in a barrio in a
 >Mexican neighborhood in California," says Cervantes, "you're not expected
 >to
 >speak. You're ignored. You're something in the periphery, emptying
 >garbage
 >cans or washing plates. And you're not expected to speak, much less
 >write."
 >
 >
 >In an electrically-charged moment, poet Amiri Baraka incants phrases from a
 >long poem on slavery and its charring legacy: "We were slaves," he repeats
 >in
 >the voices of so many no longer here to represent themselves. "We were
 >slaves. We were slaves…At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean is a railroad
 >made of human bones."
 >
 >Moyers asks poet Mark Doty, whose subject matter confronts the harsh
 >reality
 >of suffering, if he feels fortunate to be a poet, "to be able to take
 >almost
 >inexpressible emotion and turn it into something that lasts. "You can't do
 >anything to stop a terminal illness. You can't stop the course of time.
 >But
 >… I could make something to serve as a kind of vessel for what I felt, a
 >representation in that moment in time. And there I had some authority….
 >It
 >is a small gesture against loss. And yet, over time, that gesture becomes
 >a
 >larger one because that work of making something for yourself becomes
 >translated into a gift for other people."
 >
 >Is it enough for a poem to sound beautiful, Moyers asks poet laureate
 >Robert
 >Pinsky. "It may not be enough, but it's primary. The first thing is the
 >physical encounter. This is true about any human interest. If you fall in
 >love with a person, kind of cuisine, an animal or a sport -- eventually,
 >you
 >analyze it, you'll want to know its history, you'll want to know what the
 >most intelligent people have said about it. But the first thing is -- you
 >like to touch the animal, want to eat the food, want to look at the person.
 >Then comes intelligence."
 >
 >From these profoundly different life experiences, a new American voice
 >emerges like a chorus from the Festival. "The great feature of the Dodge
 >Festival is its generosity of spirit, its pursuit of different ethnic
 >groups,
 >its welcome to different factions in poetry," says Stanley Kunitz, one of
 >America's best-loved poets. Kunitz, who holds the distinction of being the
 >only poet in the English language to publish a new collection of his work
 >at
 >age 90, proves he can still transfix a crowd with the simplest of memories,
 >artfully composed.
 >
 >Later in the year, Moyers will bring more poetry to public television with
 >SOUNDS OF POETRY, a series of nine half-hour programs that features
 >additional readings and conversation with poets at the Dodge Festival.
 >Poets
 >featured in performance, and in
 >
 >
 >
 >dialogues with their audience, with each other, and with Moyers are Amiri
 >Baraka,
 >Robert Pinsky, Mark Doty, Lucille Clifton, Coleman Barks, Stanley Kunitz,
 >Deborah Garrison, Jane Hirshfield, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Shirley Geok-lin
 >Lim,
 >and Marge Piercy.
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >A companion Web site for the program produced by Thirteen/WNET will be
 >accessible at www.pbs.org/foolingwithwords. A Teacher's Guide for FOOLING
 >WITH WORDS WITH BILL MOYERS, also produced by Thirteen/WNET, is available
 >by
 >writing to Fooling With Words P.O. Box 245, Little Falls, NJ 07424-0245 or
 >by
 >e-mail at [log in to unmask]
 >
 >Fooling with Words, a companion book to the PBS series, will be published
 >on
 >September 26, 1999 by William Morrow and Company, and will be available for
 >$20 wherever books are sold.
 >
 >Videocassettes of FOOLING WITH WORDS and SOUNDS OF POETRY for home, school,
 >college and library use will be available through Films for the Humanities
 >and Sciences by calling 1-800-257-5126 or by visiting their Web site at
 >www.films.com.
 >
 >Funding for FOOLING WITH WORDS WITH BILL MOYERS and SOUNDS OF POETRY was
 >provided by the Herb Alpert Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T.
 >MacArthur Foundation and Mutual of America Life Insurance Company. Funding
 >for the educational materials and the Web site was provided by the
 >Geraldine
 >R. Dodge Foundation.
 >
 >A Production of Public Affairs Television, Inc. with Tatge/Lasseur
 >Productions, FOOLING WITH WORDS WITH BILL MOYERS is presented on PBS by
 >Thirteen/WNET in New York. Executive Producers: Judy Doctoroff O'Neill,
 >Judith Davidson Moyers. Executive Editors: Bill Moyers, Judith Davidson
 >Moyers. Director: Catherine Tatge. Producer: Dominique Lasseur. Editor:
 >Joel
 >Katz. Director of Photography: Joel Shapiro. Program Consultant: James
 >Haba.
 >Director of Production: Felice Firestone. Director of Special Projects:
 >Deborah Rubenstein.
 >
 >####
 >
 >Press Contacts:
 >
 >Doris Lang Thomas Jennifer Rotanz
 >Public Affairs Television Kelly & Salerno Communications
 >Tel.: 212/560-6974 Tel.: 212/632-0207
 >Fax: 212/560-6646 Fax: 212/632-0151
 >[log in to unmask]
 >
 >
 >
  >>


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%