Mostly, actors are not real to us. If they're good, they are who they played in their last couple of films; if they are legendary, they are who they played years, ages ago. But that's their persona, and it doesn't change; it simply shifts from character to character, like an accent.
Schindler's book allows us to get acquainted with these figments of the large or small screen, if only for a moment. It may be a superficial knowledge, but so what? I'll look at Michael O'Keefe differently knowing he finds inspiration in Denis Johnson; or see Adam Arkin in a new way realizing he has a fondness for Theodore Roethke.
Many of the poems selected by these actors seem just about perfect for what we do know about them. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, perhaps our most protean of actors, finds inspiration and guidance (one presumes) in Meghan O'Rourke's Inventing a Horse, whose poem is about transformation and empathy and the requirements on those of us who would strive for either. Among other acts, says O'Rourke, inventing a horse demands "that you must walk him in the cold;/feed him bran mash, apples;/accustom him to the harness." Hoffman invents a horse in every role he plays.
If poetry isn't fully dead, it's dying, having been transformed into a Pentecostal-like string of sounds that exist only for academicians to lecture on, and of course build dissertations around. And that's too bad: we're losing something vital and important and, yes, inspirational. Schindler's compilation is not of course going to breach the cul-de-sac poetry is heading down. But it will help us understand its fundamental vitality and its capacity for inspiration, if only for a moment or two.
Article comments
1 - Josette
Interesting review! I've just read it and it was okay for me. Well, at least I got to know about new poems. But sometimes I wonder if the actors really liked those they chose...
Anyway, here's my review if you'd like to check it out.