Monday, March 02, 2015

Ron Mann's 'Poetry in Motion II' (1982)

The Poetry in Motion dvd contains a whole alternate set of performances and interview clips under the rubric Poetry in Motion II: a mixture of dithyrambic proto-slam poetry and reflective poetic observation. 

Poets in this order:

Anne Waldman
Amiri Baraka including a chat with Anne Waldman
Jim Carroll chat with Ed Sanders and John Giorno re: following John O'Hara, support from Patti Smith
Michael Ondaatje
Allen Ginsberg with bells and electric guitarist: "the older you are, the better you relate"
Peter Orlovsky on acoustic guitar doing weird, awful mimicry
Diane DiPrima re: Revolutionary Letters
Helen Adam "Apartment on Twin Peaks" - energetic and strange 
Spalding Gray (d. 2004) -- mentions suicide
Jerome Rothenberg "For Hugo Ball" 
Ted Berrigan
Charles Bukowski (see below) 
Robert Creeley
Gary Snyder "the joys of Dharma scholarship," calmness, fixing a pickup truck with help, "tough-handed men of the past"
John Giorno "you spent most of your life just trying to stay afloat"
Michael McClure "Everything lives . . ."

A snippet of Bukowski's observations:

I've always felt embarrassed walking to a movie house because I kind of make my own movies: I meet bad women, I have fights, I go to jail, I go crazy, I drink. I make my own movies . . . 

I improve upon life a little bit. Life needs improving upon. It's not as interesting as what I write. Because it's condensed and it's visible . . . so fiction is an improvement upon life. It jazzes it up a little, it puts it together, it makes it sensible, even if it's horrible it makes it logical . . . it makes something you can see. You can light up something, you can drink something that's there . . . I'm as valuable as a good plummer. 
Amiri Baraka in Poetry in Motion (1982)
Today's Rune: Initiation. 

3 comments:

Barbara Bruederlin said...

That is quite a who's who of wordsmiths in this film.

Charles Gramlich said...

This looks like something I would enjoy!

the walking man said...

Why is it every time I see Bukowski's name i want a fifth of liquor, a whore for a couple of weeks, and to hit a cop?