Bob Holman - "United States of Poetry"

"United States of Poetry"

In 1996 Holman, director Mark Pellington, and producer Joshua Blum teamed up to create "The United States of Poetry," a critically acclaimed five-part PBS television series. The program featured over 60 poets, rappers, cowboy poets, American Sign Language poets, and Slammers. In a review for the New York Times, John J. O’Connor wrote, “Wandering all over the map, geographical and literary, ‘The United States of Poetry’ unabashedly celebrates the Word. These days, that's downright courageous.” Identified as “the brainchild of Bob Holman,” the series is described as “an excellent presentation of 20th Century poetry” on the website of the Academy of American Poets.

The television series was accompanied into the market-place by a book and a soundtrack recording. The book, published by Abrams Books, was co-edited by Holman, Pellington, and Blum, with an introduction by Holman.

The soundtrack, underscored with music by tomandandy, was issued by Mouth Almighty Records. In a review for the New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, “The illustrates how thoroughly the lines between literature and popular culture have dissolved over the last 40 years.”

Read more about this topic:  Bob Holman

Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or poetry:

    There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.... The United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.
    Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)

    We are apt to say that a foreign policy is successful only when the country, or at any rate the governing class, is united behind it. In reality, every line of policy is repudiated by a section, often by an influential section, of the country concerned. A foreign minister who waited until everyone agreed with him would have no foreign policy at all.
    —A.J.P. (Alan John Percivale)

    Sean Thornton: I don’t get this. Why do we have to have you along. Back in the states I’d drive up, honk the horn, a gal’d come runnin’ out.
    Mary Kate Danaher: Come a runnin’. I’m no woman to be honked at and come a runnin’.
    Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)

    “Ask the perfumers, ask the blacking-makers, ask the hatters, ask the old lottery-office keepers—ask any man among ‘em what my poetry has done for him, and mark my words, he blesses the name of Slum. If he’s an honest man, he raises his eyes to heaven, and blesses the name of Slum—mark that!
    Charles Dickens (1812–1870)