Broadcast on PBS in 1995, this remarkable series directed by Peter Grubin presents Bill Moyers interviewing 18 poets along with their readings in front of a live audience. The eight-part series was filmed on location at the fifth annual Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo, New Jersey. When needed, the Paul Winter Consort provides accompanying music.
In the introduction to the 16-page Viewer's Guide that comes with this 3-CD package, Bill Moyers notes:
"Poetry is news — news of the mind, news of the heart — and in the reading and the hearing of it, poet and audience are fused. Strangers converge but community emerges, the shared experience of being present when poetry reveals a particular life to be every life — my life, your life, you, me, us."
Some of the poets on The Language of Life are well-known including a few National Book Award honorees, Pulitzer Prize winners, and a former U.S. Poet Laureate; others are creative and energetic new poets testing their visions and voices before our ears and hearts. We are treated to poems about love and loss, rage and violence, heroes and heroines, family, forgiveness and aging, the beauty of the natural world, pain, and courage to take a stand.
Here is a list of the astonishing poets (in alphabetical order) on this series:
Claribel Alegria
Jimmy Santiago Baca
Coleman Barks
Robert Bly
Marilyn Chin
Lucille Clifton
Victor Hernandez Cruz
Carolyn Forche
Michael S. Harper
Robert Hass
Linda McCarriston
Sandra McPherson
David Mura
Naomi Shihab Nye
Adrienne Rich
Gary Snyder
Sekou Sundiata
Daisy Zamora
As we watched The Language of Life, we recalled the many times we turned to poetry to jumpstart our spiritual journeys. We have found that this creative medium enriches our lives in innumerable ways — from giving us a fresh appreciation of language, to opening our minds to the mysteries of the natural world, to showing us how to transform our relationships.
Poets notice things we overlook and tutor us in the art of long-looking. They recognize spiritual teachers all around us and renew our spirits. As poet Mary Oliver rightly observed:
"Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes to let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, indeed."
As The Language of Life reminds us: poetry is made of breath, sound, and rhythm: it is a fleshy event. It seems that we in America rarely experience poetry in performance. In many parts of the world, especially the Middle East, poems are recited at social gatherings, in homes, or on the street. Although often written in silence and solitude, they are meant to be spoken out loud and embodied.
Thank you Bill Moyers for these soulful interviews and bringing us these lively poetry readings! Thank you for making such a rousing case for poetry as good medicine for these troubled, tense, and difficult times!
Special features on the DVD include a 16-page viewer's guide with an introduction by Bill Moyers, profiles of 18 poets, a listing of poetry festivals across the country, book lists and bibliography.
