April: National Poetry Month

His incendiary poetry assaulted the constraints of European society, helped to define the Symbolist movement, and influenced generations of later writers—including many Surrealists, Beat poets, and even rockers like Jim Morrison. This program combines a stunning visual biography of Arthur Rimbaud with excerpts from key texts, forging a unique study of the poet’s personality and examining his relationship with his mother and with Paul Verlaine.

This program explores both the history and the essential components of poetry. After viewing, students will understand how poets utilize rhythm/meter and rhyme in various forms to achieve the desired effect. Classic works of poetry are presented along with detailed graphics, engaging examples, and exciting video. On-screen multiple-choice reviews at the end of each segment reinforce important concepts and make learning fun.

This program continues to explore both the history and the essential components of poetry introduced in Volume 6. After viewing, students will understand alliteration, assonance, and consonance in connection to rhythm/meter and rhyme as they discover free verse as an artistic reaction against the poetry forms covered previously and as the dominant poetic form of our time. Classic works of poetry are presented along with detailed graphics, engaging examples, and exciting video. On-screen multiple-choice reviews at the end of each segment reinforce important concepts and make learning fun.

On this episode of Camera Three, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee perform poetry about the African-American experience. Excerpts include verses from Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sterling Brown, Frank Horne, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Margaret Walker.

What is poetry all about? How can we make sense of it? What are the main poetic forms? This comprehensive series helps students to boost their poetry knowledge and appreciation in a light-hearted and user-friendly manner.

Woven into the roots of hip-hop, slam poetry, and other socially conscious forms of expression is the seminal work of the Last Poets, a confederation of musicians and spoken-word artists who began performing together in 1968. This film documents a 2011 concert and recording session in which the Poets reintroduce some of their best known compositions, displaying as much energy and passion as when they first took on the mantle of Black Power advocacy.

Lorna Dee Cervantes began writing poetry at the age of eight and founded her own press to publish the works of Mexican-Americans. Dr. Shirley Geok-lin Lim, an English professor and Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer, uses her Chinese/Malaysian roots to bring a unique Asian-American perspective to her writing.

Equally adept at writing simple love lyrics, surreal works of great complexity, and even epics, Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda was a master of many forms of poetry. This captivating program tells the story of the poet’s life and prodigious work, set against the backdrop of the country that inspired him.

What is poetry, and what place does it have in today’s society? In an attempt to answer these questions, two filmmakers stood an old refrigerator on a busy San Francisco street corner, invited passersby to compose poems using magnetic poetry kits, and filmed the intriguing results. Both funny and poignant, this jewel of a program will make a provocative addition to courses on creative writing, poetics, language studies, and the sociology of contemporary culture. Serendipitously inspired and surprisingly profound.

This program showcases more than 130 of the world’s best-known poems cleverly performed and artistically interpreted by The First Poetry Quartet and celebrity guests. Simply an incredible collection of great writers and a wonderful journey through great poems. Within these words one may find all the love, joy, hope, fear, enchantment, and humor that is the human spirit. Featuring Claire Bloom, LeVar Burton, Robert Culp, Ruby Dee, Henry Fonda, Will Geer, Fred Gwynne, Valerie Harper, Jack Lemmon, Vincent Price, William Shatner, Irene Worth, and others. Directed by Marshall Jamison. As seen on PBS.

Poetry in America, created and directed by Harvard professor Elisa New, is a public television series and multi-platform educational initiative that brings poetry into classrooms and living rooms around the world.

Part performance, part competition, poetry slams are boosting poetry’s popularity with children, teens, and even adults. In section one of this NewsHour report, Elizabeth Farnsworth talks with nationally ranked slammers Ariana Waynes and Roger Bonair-Augard about the concept of slamming and their experiences with the genre. In section two, Spencer Michels investigates the positive impact that slamming is having on at-risk youth, as demonstrated by the Youth Poetry Slam League sponsored by WritersCorps, an organization that works with young writers in schools, detention centers, housing projects, and shelters.

If "The Raven" is not the best-known American poem, then "Annabel Lee" is. Both have endured because they successfully illustrate Poe’s esthetic theories of poetics; they use natural, comprehensible language whose music weaves a spell that underscores and heightens the language.

Through 13 of Plath's poems and excerpts from her letters, the members of The First Poetry Quartet trace the development of this gifted young American poet, who ended her life in 1963 at the age of 30.

Poetry is therapy. Udobang discusses how "Def Poetry Jam" and Bassey Ikpi inspired her to become a spoken word artist; "Transitions" explores generational stories between mothers and daughters. Ake Books and Arts Festival in Nigeria owns Ouida House.

The futility and madness of the First World War was the spur for some of the most moving poetry ever written, but the young men who brought the voice of reason to the Great War were themselves part of a long tradition of war poetry. This program traces the development of the art of war poetry from Anglo-Saxon times to the early 20th century and the works of Brooke, Owen, and Sassoon. Using extensive feature film footage as well as contemporary images, the program brings a new vitality to the checkered tales of heroism, cowardice, luck, valor, and misery which together form the experiences of war over the centuries. Jon Stallworthy of Oxford University, one of the world’s foremost authorities on war poetry, analyzes the works.