Book Review - Jason Schindler's The Poem I Turn To: Actors and Directors Present Poetry that Inspires Them - Page 2

I mean, who knew that Peter Coyote (an accomplished if not terribly visible actor) turns to the raging Buddhist poet Gary Snyder for inspiration (more about Snyder below); or that Jane Fonda digs on Rilke; John Lithgow on Keats and Yeats? Or that Carrie Fisher finds her inspiration in ee cummings (which kind of makes sense, I suppose) but also Phillip Larkin (which doesn't, but then that's one reason the book is valuable)? 

[N.B., Snyder and Coyote: Snyder is a poet I've admired seemingly forever. He's a stealthily subversive poet, Zen-quiet and unrelenting in his remorseless visions of who we really are and the many worlds we inhabit. He's a manically serene poet, who would at first seem insular and remote, perhaps. But Coyote understands him brutally. About Snyder's This Tokyo, Coyote says: "Things which emerge as form, which are named, have beginnings and consequently endings, the path between is inevitable decay." That's just about right.]

How about Daryl Hannah finding inspiration in Swiss poet Blaise Cendrars and Pablo Neruda? Or Diane Wiest admiring Sylvia Plath and Ezra Pound? And how perfect that Mary-Louise Parker — perhaps our most versatile of actors, and quirkily beautiful — surprises us with her choices: Kenneth Koch and Mark Strand. Her commentary on Koch's To You is, simply, perfect: 

"To You is one of the first poems I fell in love with. My heart rarely stops when I meet another person, but a poem or two has knocked me on my back….I love the giddiness of it, the way it sort of trips over itself with such unabashed enthusiasm and sweetness. It's told so unselfconsciously but with enormous skill and wit."

These are all revelations that surprise and please and, yes, even impress. Actors aren't supposed to be highly literate, are they? Of course, liking a few high-minded or mind-boggling poets doesn't make you highly literate, either. But it makes you real  — interesting and real.

Article Author: Stephen Foster

Stephen Foster (no relation to the composer) plays the violin and piano, but so what? He doesn't play them well. So he writes about music, has written extensively about rock, soul, jazz, and all things alt. He goes to sleep listening to Portishead every Tuesday and Thursday. …

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