is this, from Poetry Foundation, relevant as history?

POETRY FOUNDATION FALL 2012 EVENTS

Poetry Presents
Seeing the Light: Intersections of Cinema and Poetry
Friday, September 7, 7 pm
Southside Hub of Production
5638 South Woodlawn Avenue, Hyde Park
Free admission

There is a well-established history of poetry and cinema commingling, yet poetry shares the most with the tradition of experimental/avant-garde cinema, those films that are unburdened by the constraints of narrative logic, stylistic continuity, and mainstream approval. Borrowing the title from James Broughton’s tract on cinema, South Side Projections andPoetry magazine present a program of three short films by renowned experimental directors, each with poetic roots. Broughton’s Four in the Afternoon (1951, 16mm, 15 min.) adapts poems from his book Musical Chairs into a series of vignettes about four eccentric characters in search of love. Narrated by Orson Welles, Larry Jordan’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1977, 16mm, 40 min.) warps Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic ballad into a chromatic fever dream. Stan Brakhage’s Deus Ex (1971, 16mm, 33 min.) was inspired by a Charles Olson poem and Brakhage’s own frequent hospital visits. The film uses footage of an open-heart surgery to raise questions about our obsession with extending life beyond its natural boundaries.

Co-sponsored with South Side Projections


On 28/08/2012, at 10:11 PM, Lawrence Upton wrote:

> Hallo Chris,
>
> I agree with you about editing 1/4 inch tape. I suppose few do have that
> skill now. In one way it is not needed now; but a knowledge of analogue
> processes might help understanding
>
> You say
>
>> The other trick is the poetry has to be written to work with
>> the media.
>
> I agree, to a degree.
>
> One might say though that the media has to be used to suit the poetry.
>
> I have referred before now to comments I heard David Harsent make a few
> years ago about working with Birtwhistle. Maybe I should get another
> example; but I'll stick with it now.
>
> He worried me more than a bit because he spoke of the necessary
> willingness of the poet to allow the composer to rework the verse
> regardless of the poet's intentions. That's fine among consensual adults.
> But it was being delivered as THE WAY THINGS ARE AND MUST BE. & I think
> there's more to it than that. There are other possibilities.
>
> Otherwise one is reifying the separability of POETRY and MUSIC rather than
> integrating them; and reifying the idea of the solo artist.
>
>
> L
>
> -----
> Lawrence Upton
>
> http://sho-zyg.com/upton.html
>
> Visiting Fellow, Music Dept,
> Goldsmiths, University of London
> New Cross, London SE14 6NW
> ----