Poetry in America, Season 4: "More Perfect Union" Episode Sequence

FAIN: TT-280429-21

Verse Video Education, Inc. (Brookline, MA 02445-4223)
Elisa New (Project Director: January 2021 to present)

Production of five short films in the Poetry in America series.

Verse Video Education requests $300,000 from NEH Short Documentaries program to support the completion of five “More Perfect Union” episodes in Season 4 of the public television show Poetry in America. These episodes will form a sequence within the season’s eight-episode lineup. Each episode will focus on an American poem that is preoccupied with the stories that we as a nation tell ourselves. The poems in these episodes represent a range of American styles, traditions, and communities, but they share a rigorous combination of celebratory and interrogatory consciousness, foregrounding questions of historical, civic, social, and aesthetic significance.

Associated Products

Poetry in America Season Four Trailer (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Poetry in America Season Four Trailer
Writer: Elisa New
Director: Elisa New
Producer: Elisa New
Producer: Cathleen O'Connell
Abstract: Eight new half-hour episodes of Poetry in America will premiere in April 2024 for National Poetry Month. Episodes focus on unforgettable American poems, which guests read and discuss with Elisa New, the series creator, host and director. Each poem in Season Four serves as a vehicle into a broader vision of America – taking us from colonial Boston to the halls of Congress, from Texas Hill Country to Central Park – to explore the work of Phillis Wheatley, Joseph Brodsky, Sylvia Plath, Kay Ryan, Robert Lowell, Tracy K. Smith, Martín Espada, and Frank O’Hara.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://www.poetryinamerica.org/episode/poetry-in-america-season-4-trailer/
Primary URL Description: The Season Four trailer page on Poetry in America's website
Access Model: Open access--available to stream for free online
Format: Digital File
Format: Web

Phillis Wheatley: To the University (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Phillis Wheatley: To the University
Writer: Elisa New
Director: Elisa New
Producer: Elisa New
Producer: Cathleen O'Connell
Abstract: In 1770s Boston, Phillis Wheatley was at the same time enslaved and an international celebrity: a writer who mastered the most persuasive rhetoric of the day to publish enduring arguments about freedom. Inaugural poets Amanda Gorman and Richard Blanco, writer Clint Smith, and scholars Glenda Carpio and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. join host Elisa New to read two of Wheatley’s poems for public occasions.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://www.poetryinamerica.org/episode/phillis-wheatley-to-the-university/
Primary URL Description: The episode page on the Poetry in America website
Access Model: Open access
Format: Digital File
Format: Web
Format: Other

Six Years Later, Epitaph for a Centaur (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Six Years Later, Epitaph for a Centaur
Writer: Elisa New
Director: Elisa New
Producer: Elisa New
Producer: Cathleen O'Connell
Abstract: Russian-born poet Joseph Brodsky wrote about the centaur as a Cold War self-portrait: a divided global refugee, created by a geopolitics of shifting borders and cultures. Theater of War productions artistic director Bryan Doerries, writer Yelena Akhtiorskaya, and scholars Sven Birkerts, Zakhar Ishov, Jonathan Brent, and Joseph Ellis read two poems by Brodsky: one about love; the other, exile.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://www.poetryinamerica.org/episode/six-years-later-epitaph-for-a-centaur/
Primary URL Description: Episode page on Poetry in America's website
Access Model: Open access
Format: Digital File
Format: Web
Format: Other

July in Washington (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: July in Washington
Writer: Elisa New
Director: Elisa New
Producer: Elisa New
Producer: Cathleen O'Connell
Abstract: Against the backdrop of 1964 Washington D.C., Robert Lowell wrote this timeless reflection on the contradictions between American idealism and American policy. Journalists Andrea Mitchell and Justin Worland, political commentators David Axelrod and Bill Kristol, scholar Sir Jonathan Bate, and psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison join host Elisa New.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://www.poetryinamerica.org/episode/july-in-washington/
Primary URL Description: Episode page on Poetry in America's website
Access Model: Open access
Format: Digital File
Format: Web
Format: Other

Hill Country (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Hill Country
Writer: Elisa New
Director: Elisa New
Producer: Elisa New
Producer: Cathleen O'Connell
Abstract: God drives down from the mountains behind the wheel of a Jeep, in this poem by Tracy K. Smith, former U.S. poet laureate. Smith illuminates the ambrosial bounty of Texas Hill Country, where she’s joined by country music singer-songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore, members of both Christian and Jewish communities, and host Elisa New.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://www.poetryinamerica.org/episode/hill-country/
Primary URL Description: Episode page on Poetry in America's website
Access Model: Open access
Format: Digital File
Format: Web
Format: Other

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
Writer: Elisa New
Director: Elisa New
Producer: Elisa New
Producer: Cathleen O'Connell
Abstract: Long before he won the National Book Award, Martín Espada worked after school in a factory making legal pads. Espada, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, economists Natasha Sarin, Betsey Stevenson, and Justin Wolfers, historian Jill Lepore, and actor John Turturro join Elisa New to reflect on social mobility, and what connects manual labor with the raw materials of poetry and law.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://www.poetryinamerica.org/episode/who-burns-for-the-perfection-of-paper/
Primary URL Description: Episode page on Poetry in America's website
Access Model: Open access--available to stream for free online
Format: Digital File
Format: Web
Format: Other

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