Never let it be said that GITS isn’t all about improving our cumulative cultural literacy, especially re poetry as evidenced by posts here, here, here, and here.
So I am happy to share with you something by the wonderful poet Charles Simic: “On Food and Happiness,” a prose passage from Simic’s memoir The Unemployed Fortune-Teller, as read by the wonderful actress Mary-Louise Parker, star of the hit Showtime series “Weeds”.
BTW, Simic was named the 2007 U.S. Poet Laureate.
A poetic HT to my good friend Kurt Brown for forwarding me the link.
nice
Love your previous post on poetry and screenwriting. I actually studied poetry almost exclusively during college–I was a creative writing major. I am continually surprised by how much of what I learned during that to,e has come in handy as I've been learning to screenwrite.
Also, relating to poetry and movies, have you ever read any Frank O'Hara? He is my favorite poet, and quite possibly my favorite writer period. He wrote about the movies constantly. The name of my blog is taken from one of his poems. And he gave us this: http://www.frankohara.org/writing.html#ave
Whoops! Here's the link:
Ave Maria
@tanialidov: That's an awesome poem. I come to poetry — reading, not writing — late in life and lamenting that fact. It took my friend Kurt Brown years of hectoring me, sending me poetry books. Then about 6 or 7 years ago, I started reading a poem a day. No poetry criticism, just me and the primary source material. I'd save the ones I liked. Then I started to see recurring names on my list — Berry, Dunn, Kennedy, Kooser, Kunitz, Nemerov, Oliver, Simic — so I guess I've started to develop my own 'taste' re poetry.
I'll post the O'Hara poem soon on the blog with a HT to you. And many thanks!
You're welcome! Nothing makes me happier than to share my love of Frank O'Hara with the world. Reading him has changed pretty much everything about the way I think about writing. That Ave Maria poem is wonderful, and I can recommend about a million others. Bad poetry is torturous, but good poetry is a gift.
And if you give me a shout out, I will feel very famous!!