Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft

Fooling with Words is an intimate and inspirational celebration of the power and pleasure of poetry. Bill Moyers brings to life for the reader one of the most vibrant cultural events in the country - the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, the "Woodstock of poetry." Every two years established and emerging poets gather in Waterloo, New Jersey, to share their craft with poetry fans from all over the country. This "demonstration of the democratic spirit," says the dean of American poets, Stanley Kunitz, "is one of the most important revolutions in the whole history of modern poetry in this country.

Bill Moyers has covered that revolution for a decade in a series of public television specials. In the fall of 1998 he returned to the Dodge Festival to record the performances of the poets and, in interviews with them, a dazzling array of sounds insights images, metaphors and emotions. His conversations with the poets take us behind the performance to explore the sources of creativity and imagination. Stanley Kunitz, now ninety-five years old, quietly captivates with his poems "Halley's Comet" and "Touch Me." Coleman Barks not only reads from his translations of Rumi but also shares the poems that he wrote in tribute to his "most beautiful granddaughter." Mark Doty talks with Moyers about "poetry's great power to preserve, its ability to take a moment in time and hold it forever." Jane Hirshfield talks about the influence on her poetry of the eight years she studied Zen.