The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Literature, Poetry | ≅ Leave a Comment
Literary critic Harold Bloom once called Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) “the best and most representative American poet of our time.” In this video from Boston College’s Guestbook Project, Bloom recites a poem from Stevens’s first book, Harmonium, which was published in 1923: Tea at the Palaz of Hoon Not less because in purple I descended The western day [...]
≡ Category: Literature, Poetry, Television | ≅ Leave a Comment
Perhaps you know the backstory; perhaps you don’t. This week, socialite and reality “star” Kim Kardashian announced that her 72-day marriage to Kris Humphries will end in divorce. In response, the tabloids buzzed … and famed author Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses and The Moor’s Last Sigh) took to Twitter and offered up a nice [...]
≡ Category: Music, Poetry | ≅ Leave a Comment
Several weeks back, we featured Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen, the 1965 film that documented the life and times of the young poet who hadn’t yet started his legendary songwriting career. Now comes a little postscript. Speaking last Friday at the Prince of Asturias Awards, Mr. Cohen recalls the defining little moment when he shifted [...]
≡ Category: Film, Literature, Poetry | ≅ 1 Comment
Look what the vintage video gods have delivered today. Filmed in 1965, the black and white documentary Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen introduces viewers to a young Leonard Cohen. Then only 30 years old (and looking a little like Dustin Hoffman), Cohen had already established himself as a poet and novelist. But his legendary [...]
≡ Category: Music, Poetry | ≅ 1 Comment
If you liked Friday’s post, Jimmy Page Tells the Story of Kashmir, then you’ll have a little fun with this. A shorter version with subtitles appears here. For more moments of cultural precociousness, don’t miss 3 year old Samuel Chelpka reciting Billy Collins’ poem “Litany,” and 3 year old Jonathan channeling the spirit of Herbert von Karajan while conducting the 4th [...]
≡ Category: Film, Music, Poetry | ≅ Leave a Comment
Leonard Cohen, the legendary singer, songwriter and poet, was born in Montreal, Canada, on this day in 1934. In the Book of Longing, Cohen imagines the scene: I was born in chains but I was taken out of them. It was windy. Dried leaves crashed against the walls of the homeopathic hospital. I was [...]
≡ Category: Poetry | ≅ Leave a Comment
Arthur Rimbaud, once described by Victor Hugo as ‘an infant Shakespeare,’ burst onto the Parisan literary scene in 1870, shortly before he was 16. By the time 1874 rolled around, Rimbaud had broken the conventions of poetry and fashioned a new, modern poetic language. He had published all of his major works – Illuminations, Une saison en [...]
≡ Category: Film, Literature, Poetry | ≅ 2 Comments
Around here we subscribe to the theory that there’s no such thing as too much Orson Welles. A few weeks ago, we gave you Welles narrating Plato’s Cave Allegory, and before that the short animated parable/film Freedom River, and the list goes on. Now, we present The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a 1977 experimental [...]
≡ Category: Poetry, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
What do you get for the father who has everything? How about a healthy dose of canonical resentment, in the form of Sylvia Plath’s most famous poem, read by Plath herself, from our list of Cultural Icons? Or, if you’d prefer something that says “I love you” with a little less rancor, you might want to go [...]
≡ Category: Poetry | ≅ Leave a Comment
The University of Pennsylvania hosts an extensive and pretty remarkable audio collection of modern and contemporary poetry, with a generous helping of prose writers thrown in. Directed by Al Filreis and Charles Bernstein (whose U. Penn experimental poetry courses are themselves works of art), the collection includes hundreds of names you’ll recognize immediately, and others [...]
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