Customer Reviews

The Poem I Turn To With Audio CD: Actors and Directors Present Poetry That Inspires Them

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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

we drink and we drink you: I am glad Death Fugue read by Tim Blake Nelson is track 22 on the CD. I have been fond of the poem in other translations of Todesfuge by Paul Celan so "Play death more sweetly" is not the word order in this book. I found the readings on the CD impressive. Poetry gains meaning as it becomes more familiar. I don't read poetry often, but selections of poems by Rumi impress me. I know a few Rilke poems well and am puzzled when people like some that strike me like: how aren't you?