Product Details

• Format: Box set, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 4
• Studio: Winstar
• VHS Release Date: March 21, 2000
• Run Time: 240 minutes
• ASIN: 1572528303
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #556,390 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

While each of the volumes in this four-video set have certain constants (interviews with surviving friends and family, old photographs, dramatic readings), what is refreshing about this series is that each tape is tailored to the personality of the individual poet. Walt Whitman's segment includes a lot of nature and Civil War footage. Hart Crane's features several dramatic reenactments. Live recordings of Ezra Pound punctuate his biography, and William Carlos William's son gives viewers a tour of his father's--now his--family home. The result is a generally unblinking look at these poets. Their lives are neither prettied up nor made more salacious. Walt Whitman's and Hart Crane's homosexuality is dealt with matter-of-factly, while Ezra Pound's disjointed broadcasts from Italy are excerpted (although his alleged anti-Semitism is only mentioned in passing). And, of course, plenty of attention is given to their work. In addition to many readings in each of the biographies, the words of certain works appear on screen as they are read aloud, allowing the viewer to fully digest them. --Kimberly Heinrichs