UCHECHI KALU: Poetry is freedom.
I think it's one of the things I'd forgotten, that
it shouldn't confine you.
So I can say poetry is freedom.
RACHEL GALVIN: Some people have the idea that poetry
comes from the rhythms in the body.
ALLEN K.WILLIAMS II: Poetry is an obsession.
MAIA TEN BRINK: Poetry is living.
UCHECHI KALU: Poetry is like the best way
to tell your story.
JEFF DOLVEN: What is poetry?
Poetry is so old and its place in our lives is so various,
that there's no one definition that's going to do it.
RACHEL GALVIN: I like to think of what Marianne Moore tells us.
She says that, "Poetry gives us imaginary gardens with real
toads in them."
ALLEN K.WILLIAMS II: Poetry at Princeton is hard work.
TRACY K.SMITH: Poetry at Princeton is inspiring.
MAIA TEN BRINK: Poetry at Princeton is being inspired by
the people and architecture and the knowledge around me to
write and participate in poetry.
ALLEN K.WILLIAMS II: You get a lot of chances here to rub elbows
with poets, teachers, professors, and peers of a
very, very high caliber.
PAUL MULDOON: Poetry at Princeton-- like some of those
other 'P'-words, philosophy, physics-- helps us to
understand who we are in the world and indeed the universe.
When the Samarians hit on the lyre, and the Egyptians the
cat, and I told you my heart was on fire, you said
good luck with that.
When Biro sketched out the...
RACHEL GALVIN: It was interesting to be thinking of something.
It was interesting to be thinking.
To be thinking. To.
It was interesting.
It was then she heard the voice the one inside the
voice the one she heard.
It was then...
UCHECHI KALU: I find myself not even afloat, instead
chasing wrists of light to lead me back poolside.
You taught me to swim years ago, I thought so
and so did I,
Yet drowning comes much...
PAUL MULDOON: So every second year, we run the Princeton
Poetry Festival.
It's a festival, of course, that's directed primarily
towards our students.
But it's also directed towards the local community and indeed
the students in the local community.
MAIA TEN BRINK: Under my linen shirt, Bill Evans shivers me.
I skitter apart, like the rays of the cymbal sun.
TRACY K.SMITH: Your father swung his feet to the floor.
The kids upstairs drag something back and forth on
shrieking wheels.
PAUL MULDOON: Poetry helps us to live our lives at all those
other movements that may not seem quite so dramatic as the
moments as which we are born, or get married, or indeed die.
JEFF DOLVEN: The garbage men are talking trash, deep in
thought beside their truck:
The job provokes reflection on essences and accidentals.
ALLEN K.WILLIAMS II: Big, beautiful book of zany-brainy gobbledygook,
bobbleheads are nodding off while ivory towers wobble.
PAUL MULDOON: Well, most of us are scared of poetry.
Most of us have had a very, very bad experience of poetry,
usually in high school.
We've been taught-- and I think taught is the operative
word-- to believe that without a guide in the form of a
teacher, that a mere mortal who would never find her or
his way through a poem.
It would be impossible.
And indeed, it's important I think to realize that we have
to learn to read poems.
We have to learn to watch movies, though we don't realize
what a great time we're having as we're doing it.
We have to learn to listen to music, rock
and roll, pop music.
We have to learn to listen to that, Just as we have to
learn to read a poem.
So there's an element of education here, which I think
is something that we have to address right the way through
the education system.
And we're very happy to be able to try to play our part
in all of that at Princeton.
And I told you my heart was on fire.
You said good luck with that.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
UCHECHI KALU: It's just a way to make our really boring
lives really exciting on the page, and to sort of examine
what life is.