`Poetry' of PBS celebrates the voices of America
There might be no better time to engage with poetry than right now.
“Poems allow us to explore very fraught issues,” says Elisa New, host of the PBS series “Poetry in America.” “Maybe that's some of their value.”
New and I spoke recently ahead of the show's fourth season, which is available on PBS stations and websites, PoetryinAmerica.org and a range of streaming services. She discussed poetry's ability to, as she described it, “grapple with the complexities” of life now and in the past.
“The series takes us into history, and by leaving our own moments we often gain perspective on how people — well-meaning people like us — saw things very differently. Having their perspectives, in addition to those of this moment, is really valuable,” says New.
“I think that any activity we engage in that allows us to encounter tension and resistance and survive it is good for our brains and our hearts,” she says.
That phrase — “good for our brains and our hearts” — is about as fine a way to describe the PBS series as any. If you haven't seen it and are imagining a dry, droning academic slog, that's not it at all. “Poetry in America” confounds expectations with episodes bursting with smart conversation, affecting music and vibrant visuals tailored to each poem.
“One of the great privileges of making this series is thinking about how to use image and music, not to eclipse the language, but to help you see these poems and hear these poems and feel these poems,” says New, who credits the team she works with to make the show. “The opportunity to be coordinating those things — the visuals, the music, the language, the interviews — is what makes this show for me such a joy.”
The show strives to approach the work in ways you've not seen before.
“The poems are not disembodied typography,” she says.
The new season of “Poetry in America” looks at works by Phillis Wheatley, Joseph Brodsky, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Tracy K. Smith, Frank O'Hara and more.
“What we try to do, season by season, is show every kind of poem written for every kind of purpose and audience. We really strive for a lot of variety, so that whatever experience you had with the episode you've just watched, you're going to have a completely different experience with the next one,” says New. “So that it's always surprising: `Wow, I didn't know a poem could do that.' ”
New says this season looks at the ways in which American poets help define the values and vision of America. The contributors provide a range of intelligent and interesting voices — from country singer and ice-cream maker to student poets and a former Supreme Court justice, Stephen Breyer.
In the past, the series has featured Bono, Gloria Estefan,
Nas and President Joe Biden among its guests; this time we hear from Richard Blanco, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Amanda Gorman, Bill Kristol, Maria Popova, Clint Smith, Tracy K. Smith, John Turturro, Dr. Andrew Weil and more.
New and I also discussed Wallace Stevens' “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” a poem I studied in college.
Even though I had some background with it, I discovered new things about it watching the episode. I also learned more about the poet, who famously worked in insurance and apparently was not as delightful as his poems or the art objects he collected.
New shared that through “a very weird set of circumstances” she'd ended up owning some of Stevens' things, including the paintings you see in the episode. She bought the items, which had been slated for a Stevens museum that didn't take off, in hopes of keeping them together to donate to an institution.
“It was all his stuff, including his desk. I own that, too. I need to give it to somebody,” says New, who hopes to find an institution to take the items. “Stevens is a really great poet, but he would not be my favorite person in the world. And so I have a lot of ambivalence about sitting at his desk in his chair.”
So, what's his chair like? “It's very uncomfortable.” “Poetry in America” returns for its fourth season on PBS stations, pbssocal. org, the “Poetry in America” website and streaming services.