Anchorage poet Linda McCarriston, who's already made it big on the national poetry scene, joins 17 other poets in a Bill Moyers special to be released on PBS this weekend, "The Language of Life." The eight-part series will premiere Friday, June 23rd, from 8-10pm, and air on subsequent Fridays through July 28th (the first and last days feature two parts each.)Moyers, strung out from the challenge of recovering from open heart surgery and struggling for funds, almost canceled production of the series. But what he calls, "A renaissance of poetry in America," was too much to pass up, and too powerful in his own life to ignore.
The film documents a recent event, the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival - a twice-yearly, three-day poetry convention in Waterloo, N.J., featuring some 90 cutting-edge poets and their recent work. Through documenting the festival, Moyers explores what he sees as a resurgence in popular acceptance of poetry, and a rebirth of the art in general.
"The mission of the festival," says McCarriston, "is to bring poetry off the page for the benefit of High School students, their parents and their teachers. We hope we can help to repair the sense of alienation and estrangement Americans feel about poetry." This is the third time Moyers has attended the festival, and the documentary promises to be the most intense yet made.
In the series, Moyers explores the depth, range, and authenticity of poetry styles from around the country. From Adrienne Rich to Daisy Zamora to Robert Bly, the central issues of living are addressed by a diverse group of people - and an equally diverse audience of 5,000 stands completely entranced.
"Previous Bill Moyers' documentaries on the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival have been seen by 22 million people," says McCarriston, "and we expect about that many will be watching this one, too." Her episode will air June 30 at the same time, and will be followed by a July 5th reading at Cyrano's.
I was fortunate to hook up with McCarriston briefly on the phone - she's been doing a number of interviews since national exposure made them a necessity, but she's grateful she doesn't bear the brunt of publicity - PBS and WNET/Thirteen in New York are handling most of that. "I want to be a poet, not a traveling salesman," she says, "and they're doing a great job with the publicity."
The TV program and the Cyrano's reading will center on her award-winning book, Eva-Mary, an autobiographical collection of poems that deals with her abused upbringing in an Irish, working-class family in Massachusetts. "I first published nationally when I was in my mid-30s, almost 15 years ago," says McCarriston, "But my life as a poet has been very seamless... I started writing when I was a kid, continued as an undergrad, and consistently have received recognition."
Besides winning the Terrence Des Pres prize for Eva-Mary, she has been a visiting professor at George Washington University, a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe, a regular on NPR's Fresh Air, and has been teaching literature and writing at UAA since last summer when she moved here from Virginia. She has written another book, "Talking Soft Dutch."
McCarriston says a large part of her mission is to bring poetry back to the people by making it more accessible. "The common reader doesn't feel that poetry belongs to him or her, but that it belongs instead to specialists," she says, "The ordinary person has no reason to read poetry, because it's seen as too difficult to understand, and it's not about ordinary lives - it's about other lives." For McCarriston, "It's all about the democratization of poetry - a reappearance in American poetry of works by a broad spectrum of American people."
McCarriston's episode will feature another poet, Sandra McPherson, who writes about her own evolution as a daughter, wife and mother. The episode is titled "The Field of Time," from a portion of McCarriston's interview, "I am blessed by my life. I am blessed by consciousness. I am, at root, a profoundly joyful person. I know great sadness, which is often with me, but I feel as if I wanted so much to get in, and I'm one of the lucky ones who knows I got in... into the field of time."
McCarriston's episode will air July 1st at 8pm on KAKM Channel 7. Her reading at Cyrano's will be July 5th at 7pm. Starting Sunday and continuing every week through Aug. 13th, Cyrano's will be showing "The Language of Life" on a large-screen TV followed by an open mic reading in addition to their regularly scheduled events.