Customer Reviews

Fooling with Words : A Bill Moyers Special [VHS]

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I use this video when teaching college literature and creative writing courses. For lit. students, seeing people enjoying themselves at a poetry festival assaults all their ideas about the topic. They engage with the texts (printable from the PBS website) by seeing and hearing the authors recite them. (Using closed captioning, we can also read along while the poets recite.)

The range of poetic types and styles provide examples for exercises, lectures--even research papers on some of the more established authors like Baraka, Clifton, Kunitz, etc. And the show is entertaining--when students request to hear poems over and over (those of Curtis Lamkin particularly), it is a surreal classroom situation.

Bill Moyers is a Public Broadcasting Systems icon. His thought provoking programs are a model for documentary film makers, both in terms of content and style. 'Fooling with Words' is no exception to this tradition of excellence.

Here, he is true to the spirit of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, on which this film is based. Each poet is shown at the podium, reading their own work to the hundreds of people in attendance, while in the setting of a large outdoor tent. The front row perspective of the camera permits us to see the range of emotions conveyed by each author while they read.

Numerous interviews with the poets help give us a sense of why they do what they do and also help to provide some background on their personal history.

If you missed this program when it was initially broadcast, these tapes will provide the setting for hours of quiet contemplation at time that is personally convenient.

I highly recommend this video. I have had the audio tapes and his book for some time and have been searching high and low for video to complement them. I really wanted to see and hear poets read their works. I wasn't a big poetry fan till I got the audios. I'm hooked and would like to go to this every-two-year festival. But, this may be the next best way to be there!!