Poetry/Performance Videos and DVDs

*Note: Except where noted, all videos/DVDs available at UCSD Film and Video Library (downstairs SSH).

Art in the Struggle for Freedom (2000, 28 mins)
Documentary about poetry and poster art during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-37. (poetry and political action, literacy, high/low art)

Blast Theory: Selected Works 1994-2000 (2000, 23 mins)
Short segments of longer videos and videotaped performances, including “Kidnap” (about staged kidnappings of willing subjects) and “Choreograph Cop” (appropriated film footage set to music). (interactivity, surveillance, narrative, violence in popular culture)

Fear and the Muse: The Story of Anna Akhmatova (1991, 60 mins)
Documentary about celebrated Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, who lived and wrote poetry in the early 20th century during the Russian Revolution and under Stalin. (art and political action, artists as agents of propaganda, socialist realism)

Gang of Souls (1990, 60 minutes) [*available at Ken Video in Kensington]
“Objective” documentary featuring William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, and other stars of the American Beat Generation. (poetry and Sixties counter-culture, poetic method and inspiration, poetry communities)

John Cage: From Zero (2004, n/a)
Four discrete films based on the work of composer John Cage, including “19 Questions” in which Cage uses chance operations to determine the length (in seconds) of his answers. (music and composition, human-machine interaction, voice and image)

Laurie Anderson: Collected Videos (1990, 60 mins)
Representative works (music/video) from one of the stars of postmodern performance art, featuring “Language is a virus” (based on the famous line by William Burroughs) and “O Superman.” (voice, representation, gender, technology and the body, gesture)

Living Language, The (1989, 60 mins)
Bill Moyers documentary featuring James Autry and Quincy Troupe (former UCSD professor), their poetry, and their respective community arts initiatives. (oral tradition, community organizing)

Slam Nation (1998, 90 mins) [*available at Ken Video in Kensington]
Film chronicling the journey of four New York slam performers to the national slam contest in Portland, Oregon. (spoken word, performance, audience response)

Take a Picture with a Real Indian (2001, 12 mins)
Video recording of performance piece featuring James Luna, who introduces himself as a “real Indian” and invites audience members to pose with him for photgraphs. (representation, consumer culture, audience response)

Towers Open Fire and Other Films (1989, 40 mins) [*available at Ken Video in Kensington]
Four films from the early 1960s featuring William S. Burroughs, Ian Sommerville, Brion Gysin, and Antony Balch, with original scripts by Burroughs. (voice and textuality, outlaw culture, production and method (cut-up), noise and nonsense, psychedelica)

Poetry and Poetics Resources

Short and incomplete list of poetry anthologies and collections of essays on poetics and new media that may be of interest to Communication students.

Allen and Butterick, Eds. (1982). The Postmoderns. [anthology of mid and late 20th century North American poetry]

Amato, Joe (1997). Bookend. [part poetry, part essay on poetry, printing, publishing, new media]

Antin, David (1984). what it means to be avant-garde. [collection of “talk poems,” poetics]

Bernstein, Charles (1986). Content’s Dream. [essays on poetry, poetics, and performance]

Bierhorst, John, Ed. (1984). The Sacred Path: Spells, Prayers and Power Songs of the American Indians. [in English translation]

Codrescu, Andrei, Ed. (1987). Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970. [anthology of American poetry from the last decades of the 20th century]

Hejinian, Lyn (2000). The Language of Inquiry. [essays on poetry and poetic realism in the Russian Formalist tradition]

Hofer, Jen, Ed. (2003). Sin puertas visibles: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Mexican Women. [one of the first collections featuring Mexican women poets translated in English]

Hoover, Paul, Ed. (1994). Postmodern American Poetry. [anthology of mid and late 20th century avant-garde poetry]

Manovich, Lev (2001). The Language of New Media. [history and theory of new media]

Messerli, Douglas, Ed. (1994). From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry 1960-1990. [comprehensive anthology of North American Poetry in the last half of the 20th century]

O’Sullivan, Maggie, Ed. (1996). out of everywhere: linguistically innovative poetry by women in North American and the U.K. [introduction to experimental / innovative poetic forms]

Polkinhorn and Weiss, Eds. (2002). Across the Line / Al Otro Lado: The Poetry of Baja California. [new anthology of poetry by Baja California writers]

Rich, Adrien (1986). Blood, Bread, and Poetry. [selected essays on poetry, politics, and gender representation in academia]

Rothenberg and Joris, Eds. (1995, 1998). Poems for the Millennium, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 [comprehensive anthology of 19th and 20th century poetry from around the world, with useful commentaries]

Rothenberg, Jerome, Ed. (1968). Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, and Oceania. [much celebrated collection (and history) of poetries, songs, drawings from around the world]

Silliman, Ron (1977). The New Sentence [poetics and political economy]