Reel Verse: Poems about the Movies

A unique Pocket Poets anthology of a hundred years of poetic tributes to the silver screen.

As early as 1915, the poet Vachel Lindsay pointed out that the deities of the ancient pantheon were being replaced by the gods and goddesses of the silver screen. The movies constitute the myths of our time, and a wide variety of poets has been deeply and imaginatively engaged with them ever since. Reel Verse contains poems about movie stars and bit players, art films and horror flicks, acclaimed directors and popcorn palaces. More than 130 poets riff on their movie memories: Langston Hughes and John Updike on the theaters of their youth; Jack Kerouac and Robert Lowell on Harpo Marx; Hart Crane on Charlie Chaplin; Sharon Olds on Marilyn Monroe; Louise Erdrich on John Wayne; May Swenson on the James Bond films, Maxine Kumin on Casablanca; and Richard Wilbur on The Prisoner of Zenda. Orson Welles, Leni Riefenstahl, and Ingmar Bergman share the spotlight with Shirley Temple, King Kong, and Carmen Miranda; The Godfather and Ridley Scott with Roshomon, Hitchcock, and Bresson. In this unique anthology, one of our oldest art forms pays loving homage to one of our newest.