By Kelly Rowe
Featured Art: “Jumping and Jiving 6” by Edward Supranowicz

In a blog post titled “Channeling Music: Where Does Music Come From?” Michael Lewis Kowalski discusses the ancient Greeks, who believed that all artists, not just writers, received their inspiration from the muses. He quotes Homer, O Muse! Sing in me and through me tell the story…. Similarly, according to the memoirs of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, Rilke’s hostess at Duino castle, he told her that the first lines of the Duino Elegies were dictated to him by a violent north wind as he walked along a cliff edge. And Yeats experimented for many years with automatic writing, believing that he received his metaphors from the spirit world.

It isn’t only writers who see themselves as simply the medium for their art. Asked about his creative process, Michelangelo Buonarroti once said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” In other words, the great sculptor was simply the tool, the liberator, the revealer. And Puccini said this about Madame Butterfly: “The music of the opera was dictated to me by God. I was only the instrument to bring it to paper.” During his lifetime, Brahms made many claims about receiving his musical inspiration from external sources.

It may seem radical to see the poet as merely a conduit. But if that is the case, can a biopic of a poet ever be of interest or value? Maybe. I could imagine a fun film about a poet whose life happened to contain a lot of drama—think Byron, with his many sexual escapades and military adventures. But though such a film might be entertaining, ultimately its success would have little to do with the poetry. At best, it might cause a viewer to seek out and read those poems.

More likely, it would have the opposite effect. Indeed, that was my experience when I recently watched two biopics. I first turned to Bright Star, based on the life of John Keats, and persuaded my husband, an engineer, to join me. We were prepared; we had visited the room beside the Spanish steps in Rome where Keats died at 25; we knew he had a sad life. But Bright Star managed to explore that life without either 1) holding our interest; or 2) saying anything interesting about poetry. It slogged through a supposed romance, focused mostly, not on Keats, but on Fanny Brawne, the well-dressed object of his affections. The film seemed to be an effort to horn in on the historical drama juggernaut dominated by the ever financially reliable Jane Austen. Poor Keats simply provided the shadowy background against which a pretty marriageable girl was posed. He was handsome and likeable, but the lack of much story undermined the film’s ability to engage the viewer. In real life, Keats had a wide circle of close friends, and Fanny Brawne was a well-read and a worthy companion for a literary genius. But in the movie an ignorant Brawne interminably bickers with Keats’ only apparent friend, Richard Woodhouse, while Keats is portrayed as a mere ghost, coughing blood.

Are there touching scenes in Bright Star? Yes. Jane Campion is a fine director, and there are lovely moments, though they are quiet and gain their power mainly from Keats’ words, not the events of his life. One is when the actor playing Keats reads, in a voice-over, one of Keats’ letters to Fanny. He has a beautiful voice, and the letter is luminous.

“For myself, I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form. I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies, and lived but three summer days. Three such days with you I could fill with more delight than 50 common years could ever contain.”

Unfortunately, the letter is brief, and we are first forced to watch Fanny lying in bed, day after day, disconsolate, waiting for it to arrive.

In another beautiful scene, Keats confronts the fact that he is dying. Fanny tries to encourage him— “I have such clear hope for your new book of poems. John, they are more beautiful than any I’ve read of Mr. Coleridge, Mr. Wordsworth, even Lord Byron”. She then begins to recite “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” and Keats joins her, the two trading lines as they read aloud Keats’ lovely ballad. The actors bring the poem to life, but this scene is a highlight of an otherwise dull film. By the end my husband and I were silently begging Keats to die before we did, of boredom.

And what did Bright Star have to say about poetry? Aside from the wonderful recitation mentioned above, only one remark, in two hours, has stayed with me, and that perhaps because it confirmed my theory that the poet is uninteresting and unimportant aside from the poetry he or she creates. Ironically, by quoting Keats (the quote is actually taken from a letter to his friend, Woodhouse) Campion, undercuts the dramatic basis for her own film:

“A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in nature; because he has no identity—he is continually in for-and filling some other body—the sun, the moon, the sea and men and women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute —the poet has none—no identity—he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God’s creatures.”

In other words, the poet is not the point, and trying to make him so is bound to disappoint.

Not only the life, but a poet’s writing process gives little to work with. Scenes of someone bent over an empty page or staring out the window don’t excite. Campion makes an effort by showing Keats sitting on a kitchen chair in a flowering orchard, dreamily penning verse. Nice try, —pretty, but ….yawn. In contrast, a biopic that explores the artistic process of a painter, a musician or a dancer could be a bit more interesting—Michelangelo lying on his back on a scaffolding, groaning, the child Mozart wowing salon audiences as he hammers out one of his own concertos, Anna Pavlova dancing her dying swan. In these cases, in exploring the artist’s life, the director has the ability to engage the viewer with what really matters—the art itself—the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the concerto or the fluttering wings of the swan. In the case of a poet, the artistic product is a flat piece of paper. Only when the poem is read, does it become powerful. Campion’s focus on Keats’ life promotes the fountain, not the torrent.

After we finished watching Bright Star, my poor husband begged to be excused from any further movie nights until my essay had been submitted. “Slow,” he commented. “And depressing.” Too true. So I was left on my own to watch A Quiet Passion, about the life of Emily Dickinson. A small digression: a hundred years ago, after being accepted to an MFA program, I read the poetry of Professor X, who taught in the program. I loved Professor X’s poems, I devoured them, memorized them, recited them to myself. I was thrilled to be accepted into his workshop, and showed up on the first day, open-hearted, ready to learn all he could teach. And what did I find? A cutting, cruel, cynical man. When he read a student’s work aloud, his intonation created a condescending, comic effect. When he commented on a line, it was with bile.

I hadn’t thought of Professor X in many years, but when I watched A Quiet Passion, he came back to me, along with the lesson I learned in his workshop: that often, the less you know of a poet or artist the more you can admire and love their work. As with a great chef, it’s best to enjoy the dish you are served, and stay out of the kitchen where they are shouting and waving a cleaver.

As with Keats, Dickinson’s life contained few notable events. With little material at his disposal, Terence Davies first explores Dickinson’s youthful rebellion against the religious demands placed on her at school. Dickinson is shown standing alone, her schoolmates watching, as she and the schoolmistress debate the meaning of sin and the necessity of salvation. “Have you said your prayers? “ asks the school mistress, coldly. “Yes,”replies Dickinson. “Though it can’t make much difference to the creator….I have no sense of my sins, and how can I? I wish I could feel as others do, but it is not possible.” This, and the nasty response of the headmistress, condemning Dickinson to hellfire, provide a mildly promising start.

Unfortunately, the film moves quickly into Dickinson’s middle age, portraying her as embittered and cynical. She is shown as deeply attached to her family, but to her detriment, as her father, in particular, was severe, and controlling in the extreme. The film tries to inject excitement by showing Dickinson in love—but her pursuit of an inappropriate and unrequited love-interest with a married minister felt cringy, rather than passionate. In the end, the film relied on shouting and fits of tears for excitement. Dickinson’s evolution into an agoraphobe and screeching harpy in constant raging arguments with her “beloved” family members was painful to watch. Bright Star began to seem bright, indeed, in comparison to this torturous portrait of an unhappy and co-dependent family.

Unable to take anymore, I fast forwarded through the long drawn-out death of Dickinson’s mother, and then of Dickinson herself. In the end, I felt a great sympathy for the actual Emily Dickinson. I can’t believe she was as entirely unpleasant and unhinged as the film portrayed her. In fact, I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt and adopt Adrienne Rich’s argument that Dickinson’s choice to remain in seclusion was a practical one, that allowed her to control her time, observe the world and write.

Finally, I was left with a conviction that a biopic just isn’t the best way to engage with poetry. A film biography of a poet is an ineffective medium for conveying the power of poetry because the poet is merely the conduit for the work, and has no more value apart from his or her art, than does the clerk at your grocery store. Perhaps this is true for all artists, but as discussed above, it may be easier to make a lively film about other types of artists.

It was many years before I could bring myself to return to Professor X’s poems. When I finally did, with the distance of time, I found them as lovely as when I first encountered them. If I had seen Bright Star, or A Quiet Passion without already knowing Keats’ or Dickinson’s work, I might never have bothered to read their poems. And what glory I would have missed! No, don’t watch movies about poets. Just go to the library, find their books, and drink from what comes pouring from the rough fountain. You may find yourself, as Brahms, did when he was composing—“in tune with the infinite.”

---

Kelly Rowe’s debut collection, Rise Above the River (2023) won the Able Muse Book Award and was a finalist for the Arizona Book Award for Poetry. She is also the author of two chapbooks. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona where she works as a volunteer immigration attorney, representing undocumented women.