Tell Me a Poem, Sing Me a Story and Other Shapes of Narrative
Clark Blaise is the host of the panel discussion.
Ana Carolina Rivera talks about the art of screen plays and how films narrate stories through images and actions. Rivera goes on to talk about having to deal with cutting out material from an original screen play to make it meet the time requirements of feature length films.
Stavros Deligiorgis, the faculty panelist, reads from E. E. Cummings’ work and Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Burglar Of Babylon” and he talks about the narrative voice found in ballads from several eras.
Juan Carlos Orihuela Ascarrunz talks about how fiction is a place where objective realization and imagination come together and where freedom is practiced in the best possible way. Orihuela reads his poem “Of Music, Demons and Other Outgrowths” and he sings two poems and two songs titled “My Life” and “The Lizard” to his own accompaniment on guitar and harmonica (some of the poems/songs are sung in Spanish).
Mostafa Messnaoui talks about the fiction between dream and nightmare that exists in movies and the problem that can occur when movies are taken as fact in their depictions of foreign countries. Messnaoui shares his insight into his view of Moroccan literature: that the present doesn’t exist because the present becomes the past in a split second. Moroccan literature is shaped as much by the invented perceptions of the west, via the movies, as by drawing upon an indigenous mixture of linguistic and historic sources. Messnaoui says that he tries to write about reality.
Bronislaw Maj talks about the different ways to use language in Polish literature. Maj doesn’t feel that he is a professional poet; he feels that poetry is a special language and that there is a special way to use poetry; each poem has an inner internal shape. Maj reads one poem in Polish and one poem, “Rain Outside the Window,” in English.
In: International Writing Program Archive
Authors: Ana Carolina Rivera , Stavros Deligiorgis, Juan Carlos Orihuela Ascarrunz, Mostafa Messnaoui, Bronislaw Maj
Date Recorded: September 11, 1996
Program: --
Format: discussion