WHAT THE HELL IS POETRY?

in his ongoing video art work of “speaking portraits,” poet/artist George Quasha puts an impossible, but unavoidable, question before poets of all kinds and in many places: what is poetry? In response poets let us in on their private space of poetry definition. This intimate view of speaking faces, each filling the screen, shows how different it is for poets/artists to say what poetry or art is than for others (critics, historians, philosophers, viewers). For a particular poet, poetry may not only be an object, a thing historically defined, but something close to the core of one’s life, perhaps even a singular event. Here we gain unique access to its nature in the person speaking.




//player.vimeo.com/video/4407987?portrait=0&color=8c9496 poetry is [vol. I] from George Quasha on Vimeo.