VHS, 90 min., 1996

This film explores the literary tradition of the South, featuring interviews with numerous living authors.  This first episode of a three-part series surveys the period from the Depression to the end of World War II.   Among those appearing as commentators throughout the series are Eudora Welty, Shelby Foote, Willie Morris, John Hope Franklin, Cleanth Brooks, Reynolds Price, Margaret Walker, Ernest Gaines, Rita Dove, Nicki Giovanni, and Andrew Lytle.

From World War I to the Depression to the Civil Rights movement to the Sunbelt, the writers of the South, black and white, have explored the mysteries of their unique region, giving us stories of paradox and beauty. Prophets & Poets explores the lives of Richard Wright, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, William Faulkner, and many more, in the context of the South's biracial culture and deep sense of Place.

DVD, 60 min., each, 1988

Study guide available

In thirteen hour-long programs, the series traces the course of American poetry during the last century and a quarter as it was shaped by some of our most important poets. Using vintage photographs and film footage, archival materials, dramatizations, and recordings, the series brings to life the writers who crafted the innovative works now recognized internationally as distinctively American.

1. Elizabeth Bishop - Geography and dislocation are dominant themes in Bishop’s poems. This program illustrates the geographical soul of Bishop’s life and works, with scenes from her poems.

2. Hart Crane - Ambivalence, pain, and longing propelled Crane to seek an "ideal world of the imagination" through premature end, Crane became a figure for legend, as the misunderstood, tragic artist, like his Romantic forbears in the 19th century.

3. Emily Dickinson - Dramatic scenarios and New England landscape illuminate the passionate genius of Dickinson, whose poems represent a broad range of imaginative experience.

4. T.S. Eliot - Through family photographs, archival footage, musical recordings, and primary literary materials, this film documents the poet’s life and the several sources of his art. Throughout the program, the author himself reads the works that have become classics in our time.

5. Robert Frost - Frost’s image of elder statesman is vividly contrasted with his vigorous, poetic exploration of the darker forces of nature and the human condition.

6. Langston Hughes - Music - the bittersweet refrains of the blues, the rhythms of jazz, and the cadences of the spiritual - informs the poetry of Hughes. Many have share excitement in discovering a personal reality and cultural heritage in his poems.

7. Robert Lowell - Lowell fused traditional poetry with Modernist techniques. He came to embody many of the painful moral and artistic tensions of our disturbing times. Lowell himself reads from his works.

8. Marianne Moore - This film traces Moore’s life and times and examines several of her notable works. Often through amusing and aptly inventive graphic interpretations, we discover Moore’s unusual poetic sources and methods, and glimpse the true character of the elusive originator of so many sophisticated artifices.

9. Sylvia Plath - This film carefully examines both the facts of life and the several facets of the writer’s art. The program is particularly illuminating as it clarifies how, in the special case of this poet, the two mingle.

10. Ezra Pound - The most controversial of American poets, Pound set the standards of Modernism. His roles of catalyst and confidant are legendary. Using historical footage, still photographs, and on-location filming, the program follows the poet’s fascinated journey, providing contexts and clues to the Pound enigma.

11. Wallace Stevens - Stevens’ exuberant wordplay, ironic wit, and provocative whimsy have bemused many other readers, while the relatively plain-spoken meditations of the poet’s somber side have proved no less puzzling. The film explores the seemingly placid exterior and intensely probing interior live of Stevens.

12. Walt Whitman - In the first and fullest sense a poet, Whitman was a maker, original, and nonconformist like his country. His poems demonstrate his American vision and style, and vividly convey their poignance and sheer power. Whitman’s sources, including Emerson, the King James Bible, opera, and political oratory, are revealed.

13. William Carlo Williams - The recurrent theme in Williams is wonder at the resilience of live, its power of renewal. A collage of documentary footage, interviews, and dramatization capture the poet’s work and life.

VHS, 45 min., 1975

The many-sided Hamlet as portrayed by the four greatest Shakespearean actors of the last sixty years: John Barrymore, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Nicol Williamson.