[peter richards]

The Browning Version - of which a film was made some time ago with Ian Holm in what I suppose is the lead role. Poetry barely features in the film, but the title refers to a book of poetry, so... I think it was made again more recently but I couldn't really go and watch it, after having seen Holm.

Under Milk Wood. I'm sure I saw a film version of this once. If my memory serves me at all well it was not good. Neither would I expect it to be, as it's such a piss-poor idea to make a film out of a sound-play. Then again, I wonder if that isn't true for any attempt to make film from poetry.

p

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

If you scroll down the first page of the Court Green thread:
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000447.html

you'll find Marion Shore's "Where Are the Film Divas of Yesteryear?" which was selected for this spring's issue of Court Green.

[Michael Cantor]

If you buy the Powow Anthology (plug!) you can read my poem Japanese for Beginners: Ronin, in which the leading man is a stock character in Kurosawa swordplay films.

[Robert J. Clawson]

Originally posted by A. E. Stallings:

"I was surprised that a transformative scene for Cameron Diaz's character hinges on her reading a poem--Bishop's "One Art". A Cummings poem also makes a cameo."

Friday night, at the Concord Poetry Center, Donald Hall was grousing about Diaz including some Jane Kenyon, but not attributing it.

Diaz didn't write the script.

Bob

[Robert J. Clawson]

Tino Villanueva wrote a booklength poem, "Scene from the Movie GIANT," which won an American Book Award. Curbstone Press.

Bob

[Clay Stockton]

According to the Coen Brothers, O Brother Where Art Thou? is based on The Odyssey.

Chris, the not-so-good movie you're thinking of is A.I.

--CS

[Janet Kenny]

I wrote a poem inspired by the great Russian actor, Innokenty Smoktunovsky.

Obscure? Ah well
Janet

[Marion Shore]

Wonderful topic!

Dana Gioa's Cruising with the Beach Boys

The penultimate stanza:

Some nights I drove down to the beach to park
And walk along the railings of the pier.
The water down below was cold and dark,
The waves monotonous against the shore.
The darkness and the mist, the midnight sea
The flickering lights reflected from the city-
A perfect setting for a boy like me,
The Cecil B. DeMille of my self-pity.

In "The Petrified Forest" poetic soul Leslie Howard reads Villon to a naive, romantic Bette Davis.

I believe there was a movie based on "The Divine Comedy"(!)
Also, "The Canterbury Tales (very sexed-up, if I'm not mistaken).

Does anyone know who wrote/sang the song that went "The movies are a mother to me"?


In high school my nights were spent watching old movies on TV (which explains my grades)... Anyway movies--old and new-- are a great source of inspiration for me (so is television, I must admit!).
[Check out my poem "The Movie" now appearing on a second-run thread on DE. (I'm offering a prize for anyone who guesses what movie it is.)]

Movie Buff in Massachusetts

[Robert Meyer]

The Middle English epic poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" was made into a movie called <u>Sword of the Valiant</u> (with Sean Connery as the Green Knight). The medieval Greman epic by Gottfried von Strassburg "Tristan" was made into the movie <u>Lovespell</u> (with Richard Burton as King Mark), and that movie has the two Isoldes like the poem and not the one Isolde of Wagner's opera. The new Tristan movie, while interesting in and of itself (especially its politics), has a lot more inconsistencies with both Wagner and Gottfried to be considered a movie based on a poem.

Robert Meyer


[This message has been edited by Robert Meyer (edited March 29, 2006).]

[Marion Shore]

Robert,

I'm interested that you mentioned the latest Tristan movie, which does leave out many elements of the traditional version-- the potion, the dragon, all the magic elements, as well as the two Isoldes as you mention (actually there were three, if you count her mom!) But my feeling about the recent movie is that by placing it in a realistic, historical setting (well, more or less) and simplifying and de-mythologizing it, they’ve distilled the essence of the legend, making the love story shine out all the more brightly against the stark, realistic background. So in that sense I would say it is true to Gottfried's version.

But speaking of poetry, the one bizarre element of this movie was Isolde's reading Donne’s “The Good Morrow”! What were they thinking? And yet, the poem was still somehow quite moving, although it did strain one’s suspension of disbelief a wee bit--the one minor flaw in this (underrated by critics) heartbreakingly beautiful film.

Marion