The Poem I Turn to: Actors and Directors Present Poetry That Inspires Them [With CD]

The Poem I Turn To: Actors & Directors Present Poetry That Inspires Them is a wonderful anthology that embraces poems chosen by some of our most notable actors, directors, and other movie makers such as actors Alan Arkin, Carrie Fisher, Jane Fonda, Amy Bloom, Steve Buscemi, Paul Guilfoyle, Daryl Hannah, Melissa Leo, Alfre Woodard and David Duke, producers or directors Michael Fitzgerald, Kathleen Glynn, John Landis, Billy Luther, Eric Mendelsohn, Screenwriters Kyra Sedgwick, Michael Lally, and several more. Each one of these personalities have selected two of their best loved poems and as mentioned in the introduction, the reasons for their choices are wide and varied such as the "lyrical tenderness of a poem, its physicality and beauty of the body, the passing of time, the intense sorrow of war, the great joy of nature, the elusive and ephemeral light and darkness of memory, and the capacity and courage to sustain love." All have found splendour within the poetic language that have reached inside and touched them on a unique level or plateau that live in their body, mind and spirit. As Jason Shinder states in the introduction, "By sharing the poems they turn to, and commenting on their choices, the contributors in this book offer testimony to our essential human need for contemplation in a work in which the velocity and volume of experience are often overwhelming." The wide spectrum of poems that have been included represent many schools of poetry and many different types of poets. You will read and even hear poems from some well-known poets as Shakespeare, Edna St. Vincent Millay, T.S. Eliot, Mark Twain, Pulitzer prize winner Mary Oliver, Eugene O'Neill, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, to the lesser known as Anna Akhmatova whose was born in the Ukraine in 1889 and whose work was banned from 1925 through 1940, Clarence R. Wylie, Jr. who was both a poet and mathematics professor at Furman University in South Carolina, Meghan O'Rourke whose first book of poetry, HALFLIFE was published in 2007 and many others. One poem, and yes there were many more, that particularly touched me was Ezra Pound's In a Station at the Metro chosen by actor Michael O'Keefe whose first acclaimed film role was as the oldest son of Marine aviator in The Great Santini. Pound's poet is succinct yet says it all when he writes: "The apparition of these faces in the crowd; "Petals on a wet black bough." O'Keefe's comments pertaining to this poem are particularly interesting when he states: "By establishing the location of the poem in the title, In a station of the metro, the vivid image that follows completes the poem and one is transported to that literary station of the mind's eye where the `apparition of these faces in the crowd' instantly become, petals on a wet black bough. The poem is apprehended and its imagery is established so quickly that it is over faster than a train passing in the Parish Metro. Whoosh: a poem." It should be pointed out that included alon

Shinder and advisory editors Michael O'Keefe and Lili Taylor have put together one lovely collection that, by extension, shows the power of poetry in the daily life of creative people everywhere. In "The Poem I Turn To" we are given an impressive cross-section of film artists sharing the poems that move and inspire them. I love the informal commentaries by actors and directors giving testimony to how the poem they've selected has worked in their lives. Each poem is accompanied by a short bio of the poet. The bios for the filmakers appears in the back of the book for easy reference. The poets chosen lean on the Anglo-American canon, but they selections do step out...and also rub against each other in interesting ways. I'd like to see an index in the book so I could look up poets by name and poems by title. You'll love meeting both familiar friends and new poems in "The Poem I Turn To." Janet Grace Riehl, author Sightlines: A Poet's Diary