Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft [Hardcover]

Bill Moyers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 22, 1999

Fooling with Words is an intimate, inspirational celebration of language in its most exalted form and of the importance of poetry in our lives today. In dozens of poems and a series of fascinating conversations with poets of all stripes gathered for the acclaimed Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, Fooling with Words brings poetry to life for the reader.

Bill Moyers has been covering the poetry beat for more than a decade, and in the fall of 1998 he returned to the Dodge Festival with his public television cameras, capturing the performances of the poets, and, in interviews with them, their dazzling array of images, metaphors, and emotions. Coleman Barks not only reads from his translations of Rumi, but also shares the poems that he wrote in tribute to his "most beautiful granddaughter." Mark Doty talks with Moyers about "poetry's great power to preserve, its ability to take a moment in time and hold it forever." Jane Hirshfield talks about the influence on her poetry of the eight years she studied Zen, including three years in a monastery when she didn't write at all.

Moyers listens to these and other poets including Lorna Dee Cervantes, Deborah Garrison, Paul Muldoon, Marge Piercy, Kurtis Lamkin, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Stanley Kunitz, and Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, and weaves another invaluable and enjoyable tapestry of poems with the memorable voices of the poets themselves. Anyone who loves poetry or is seeking a special gift will cherish Fooling with Words.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo, New Jersey, has been called the Woodstock of poetry. Taking place over the course of several (often hot and sticky) summer days, the festival comprises readings and workshops and performances. Audiences under the big top can reach a couple thousand. It is stunning to see so many lovers of poetry gathered in one place.

For Fooling with Words, Moyers interviews 11 of the poets on the festival's 1998 roster. "Talking to poets about their lives," he says, "makes their poetry more accessible to me." And what a variety of poets and lives he has come up with! The youngest is New Yorker senior editor Deborah Garrison (A Working Girl Can't Win), then 32; the eldest, Stanley Kunitz, 93 years old and wearing a lime-green jacket. In between are Coleman Barks, Robert Pinsky, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Paul Muldoon, Marge Piercy, Mark Doty, Jane Hirshfield, Kurtis Lamkin, and Shirley Geok-Lin Lim. These conversations are dotted with poems. "I like to know about the experiences that produced the poet," says Moyers, and the intermingling of conversation and poetry is a wonderful, casual way to be introduced to a poet's sensibility. Doty discusses the pain of "writing about the hardest things in the world." Hirshfield talks about her Zen practice and the notion that ideas "can graze inside us like animals who reshape the landscape with their grazing." Throughout, there is the sense of lives that would not be bearable without poetry. "Poetry is what has saved me," says one poet here; "You never know when your poem will come to someone's rescue," chimes another. --Jane Steinberg

From Library Journal

Moyers here interviews 11 American poets (e.g., Robert Pinsky, Mark Doty, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, and Paul Muldoon) whose voices echo the diversity of the United StatesAa wonderful jumble of genders, ethnic groups, and religions. This book is not a how-to; interviews (accompanied by the interviewee's poetry) focus on the poet as an individual, the creative process, and enjoying poetry and reveling in its sound. The interviews reveal the passion and focus the poets bring to their writing and how they transmute mundane occurrences into vital, meaningful life experiences. Based on a two-hour PBS documentary airing this fall and ten half-hour programs Moyer did at the Dodge Poetry Festival in fall 1998, this delightful book is highly recommended for all libraries. [BOMC featured selection.]AShana C. Fair, Ohio Univ. at Zanesville Lib.
-AShana C. Fair, Ohio Univ. at Zanesville Lib.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; First Edition edition (September 22, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688173462
• ISBN-13: 978-0688173463
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #697,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bill Moyers was a founding organizer of the Peace Corps, a senior White House assistant(and press secretary) to President Lyndon Johnson from 1963 until 1967, the publisher of Newsday, a senior news analyst for CBS News, and the producer of groundbreaking series for public television. He is the winner of more than thirty Emmy awards and nine Peabody awards. Among his bestselling books are Listening to America; A World of Ideas; The Power of Myth (with Joseph Campbell); and Moyers on America. His latest book is Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars extremely accessible and non-pretentious, February 23, 2001

By 

M. H. Bayliss "book queen" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft (Paperback)

Unlike most poetry books, this one focuses on the poet's insights into his/her own work and some very accessible poems by modern poets. Moyers refuses to get bogged down in the technique of poetry (rhyming, meter, scansion, etc...) and instead focuses on each author's comments and explications of his own work. Each chapter picks one poet and starts with his/her reading at the festival and then an informal Q and A that sheds light into how poets become poets. No surprises here -- most who write it can't think how they could NOT have written, even at an early age. In some cases, poetry literally rescued their authors from their borderline lives. For anyone interested in the creative process, this is an easy to follow and enlightening short volume on poetry and poems.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a GREAT book!, August 26, 2001

By 

Writing Chemistry (Seoul, South Korea) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft (Hardcover)

Hi, I am someone who has loved English Literature, and struggled with it during the high school years, as English was not my mother tongue. Poetry was always the hardest to grasp. I've always wished I could get to know it better, but I've felt the high barriers time and again. Over time, I began to distance myself from Poetry and secretly hated The Art. Until this book that is! =o) Bill Moyers is such a wonderful guide to this Difficult Land - he makes it accessible, and helps me to understand and better appreciate contemporary poetry. Each chapter is based on an interview with a certain poet. He starts off by describing each individual; how he or she looks, acts, and what type of influence(response) they have on the audience. It is like meeting someone in real life. Then the interview unfolds into a discussion about what the poet's life is like, how they began to write, and what their main themes are. But the virtue of this book lies in that the book doesn't stop at being a gossipy interview. It remains focused on getting to know their poems. Each chapter is punched in by several poems and the poet explains them, which is just so much better than the Cliff's Notes! Bill Moyers writes so beautifully, and with ease - I read this book in the subway during my commute. This is certainly a book to have for the leaves-falling autumn.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A delightful excursion into the minds of some great poets., December 30, 2000

By 

talesin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft (Hardcover)

I grabbed this book on a whim from my local library - oh, I haven't seen this one before, what the heck, I've got the weekend free. And proceeded to spend the next two days riveted to the pages.

Bill Moyers makes 230 pages go a long way. Each section is an interview with a different poet, a mixture of general discussion on poetry and specific details about their own work methods and beliefs with commentary on a couple of their own poems. In essence, you get to listen in to someone asking all those questions that you would like to ask! It manages to be both informative and very entertaining. A little more accessible than Lehman's "Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms", it is also an excellent introduction to a facinating variety of poets. Thoroughly reccommended! If only it were longer ...