No Time for Poetry?: Star Trek Messiah

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Star Trek Messiah

What happens when Mozart does Haendel and the work is taken up again today with a philosophical and contemporary bent? It's been too short a run, but last week was what I'd like to call "Star Trek Messiah," or "Der Messias" at the Theatre du Châtelet. The libretto, a collage of Biblical texts, was sung in German, with meditative texts written and read by Michel Serres.

This performance was like no other you've ever witnessed of "The Messiah." It was not a classic rejoicing but an uneasy questioning, made more poignant when some members of the audience repeatedly yelled at Michel Serres as he recast the musical creation into a contemporary religious experience, with inverted beatitudes.

It felt very much like a close encounter with the final frontiers of humanity... and an attempt to see what can re-humanize the world today.

Benoît Chantre's conferences preceding every performance (as well as his text in the program) provided a coherent backdrop to the choices made for the stage. Oleg Kulik's video expertise was nothing less than amazing.

Links:

Théâtre du Châtelet (2011).

Complementary conferences (2011).

Poetry Anthologies

Astley, Neil (ed), Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2002.
Bloom, Harold, The Best Poems of the English Language, From Chaucer through Frost, New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Brooks, Cleanth & Warren, Robert Penn, Understanding Poetry: An Anthology for College Students, 1950.
Constantine, David J., Lee, Hermione, and O'Donaghue, Bernard (eds), Oxford Poets 2002: An Anthology, Manchester: Carcanet, 2002.
Feinstein, Sascha & Komunyakaa, Yusef (eds), The Second Set, The Jazz Poetry Anthology, volume 2, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.
Feinstein, Sascha and Komunyakaa, Yusef (eds), The Jazz Poetry Anthology, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.
France, Linda (ed), Sixty Women Poets, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 1993.
Longley, Edna (ed), The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2000.
Parisi, Joseph (ed), Poets in Person, A Listener’s Guide, Second Edition, Chicago: Poetry Press, 1997.
Paschen, Elise, and Presson Mosby, Rebekah (eds), Poetry Speaks, Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, 2001.
Pinsky, Robert and Dietz, Maggie (eds), An Invitation to Poetry: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology, New York: Norton, 2004.
Rampersad, Arnold (ed), The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry, Oxford: OUP, 2006.
Rees-Jones, Deryn (ed), Modern Women Poets, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2005.
Ricks, Christopher (ed), The Oxford Book of English Verse, Oxford: OUP, 1999.
Rogrow, Zack (ed), The Face of Poetry, Berkeley: U. California Press, 2005.
Rosenthal, M.L. (ed), Poetry in English: An Anthology, Oxford: OUP, 1988.
Vendler, Helen (ed), The Faber Book of Contemporary American Poetry (1985), London: Faber, 1990.
Wu, Duncan (ed), Romanticism, An Anthology, Third Edition, London: Blackwell, 2006.

Poetry's Rhythms & Forms

Wolosky, Shira, The Art of Poetry: How To Read A Poem, Oxford: OUP, 2001.
Wainwright, Jeffrey, Poetry, The Basics, London: Routledge, 2004.
Turco, Lewis, The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (1968), 3rd edition, 2000.
Strand, Mark and Boland, Eavan, The Making of a Poem, A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.
Oliver, Mary, A Poetry Handbook, Harcourt, 1995.
Lennard, John, The Poetry Handbook, Second Edition, Oxford: OUP, 2006.
Kowit, Steve, In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop, Tilbury House Publishers, 1995.
Kinzie, Mary, A Poet’s Guide to Poetry, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Hollander, John, Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse, 3rd edition, Yale University Press, 2001.
Hall, Donald, To Read A Poem, Second Edition, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc, 1992.
Fussell, Paul, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.
Attridge, Derek, The Rhythms of English Poetry, London: Longman, 1982.

Criticism & Commentary

Brown, Clare and Paterson, Don (eds), Don’t Ask Me What I Mean: Poets in Their Own Words, London: Picador, 2003.
Corcoran, Neil (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century English Poetry, Cambridge: CUP, 2007.
Edwards, Michael, Le Génie de la poésie anglaise, Paris: Livre de Poche, 2006.
Gioia, Dana, Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture (1999), Tenth Edition, Saint Paul: Graywolf Press, 2002.
McDonald, Peter, Serious Poetry: Form and Authority from Yeats to Hill, Second edition, Oxford: OUP, 2007.
Padell, Ruth, 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, A Poem for Every Week of the Year (2002), London: Vintage, 2004.
Parini, Jay, Why Poetry Matters, Yale University Press, 2008.
Paulin, Tom, The Secret Life of Poems: A Poetry Primer, London: Faber, 2008.

Perloff, Marjorie, Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004.
Rich, Adrienne, What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993), New York: W.W.Norton & Co, 2003.
Robinson, Peter, Poetry, Poets, Readers: Making Things Happen, Oxford: OUP, 2002.

Sacks, Peter, The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats, John Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Warren, Rosanna, Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry, New York: Norton, 2008.

Poetries of the English Language: comparative studies UK & USA

Auden, W.H., "American Poetry," in The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (1962).

Bromwich, David, Skeptical Music, Essays on Modern Poetry, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 2001.

Collins, Billy, "What's American About American Poetry?" undated, posted on U.S. Info State Gov page.

Falck, Colin, American and British Verse in the Twentieth Century: The Poetry That Matters, Aldershot, Hampxhire and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003.

Finch, Peter, "British Poetry Since 1945," The Continuum Encyclopaedia of British Literature (2003).
Homberger, Eric, The Art of the Real: Poetry in England and America since 1939, London: Dent, 1977.
Hooker, Jeremy, The Presence of the Past: Essays on Modern British and American Poetry, MidGlamorgan: Poetry Wales Press, 1987.

Poetry Society, "What's American Q & A Index," at www.poetrysociety.org.
Quinn, Justin, American Errancy, Empire, Sublimity & Modern Poetry, Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2005.
Williams, Oscar (ed.), A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry, English & American, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1946.

No Time for Poetry?

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Star Trek Messiah

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