The United States of Poetry

I got this today – the CD version of the documentary The United States of Poetry.

I first saw this documentary ages ago, and my roommates and I taped several (if not all) episodes of the show when it aired on TV, back in college. The whole thing was done by Mark Pellington, and the visuals I found quite compelling.

I’ve tried looking around for a copy of the show, but it’s only available on VHS – and the few copies I’ve found have been in the neighborhood of $100. Maybe one of these days I’ll break down and buy it, but man – that’s a lot of coin to thrown down for VHS.

I really liked the documentary though. In fact, it became part of my morning routine at times, when I was younger. In the same way that I used to watch music videos obsessively in the morning, I used to do the same thing with these poetry videos. I’d wake up, throw on a pot of coffee, and then wake myself watching the same select poems over and over.

I’m fond of several of the poems in the documentary, but sadly… some of my favorites didn’t make it onto the CD. I’ve only had a chance to listen to a handful of the audio, and at times I think the background music gets annoying, and in the way. What’s frustrating is that, on hearing these tracks, it just re-enforces my desire to see these videos again.

I’ll try to post up a few of the clips in the audioplayer later on. In the meanwhile, you can check out the (old) homepage for the series, if you want a peek at what some of the rest of the show was like. Sadly, I think a lot of those internal links are all broken.