Series: Poetry Breaks
Program: Poetry Breaks I, Galway Kinnell
Episode: 336
Date: 1988-01-01
Duration: 00:01:27

Subject: Oral interpretation of poetry; Readings
People: Kinnell, Galway
Copyright Holder: Leita Hagemann Luchetti and WGBH Educational Foundation

Clip Description
Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Galway Kinnell, reads "Wait," a poem he wrote for a student who was thinking about suicide after a love affair gone wrong.

Program Description
Galway Kinnell was born in Providence, R.I., on February 1, 1927. After receiving degrees from Princeton (B.A.) and University of Rochester (M.A.), he served in the U.S. Navy. He taught writing at schools throughout the world, including France and Iran, and is presently one of the directors of the Creative Writing Program at SUNY Binghamton and New York University. He has won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1983) and the American Book Award. He was a MacArthur Fellow and was named State Poet of Vermont. Among his books of poetry are Three Books: Body Rags/Mortal Acts Mortal Words/the Past, The Book of Nightmares, When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone, and Imperfect Thirst. He currently lives in Vermont and New York.

Galway Kinnell introduces and reads his poems at his farmhouse in Vermont. The following poems were mastered for broadcast and general distribution, and appear on the master tapes with and without Poetry Breaks logo and copyright:

"Wait"
"TV Commercials"
"Daybreak"
"Prayer"
"How Many Nights"
"Saint Francis and the Sow"
"After Making Love We Hear Footsteps"
"Kissing the Toad"

Multiple takes of those poems appear on the source tapes of original footage. The following poems are also included on the source tapes:

Excerpts from "Middle of the Way"
"Last Songs"
"Crying"
"Eating Blackberries"
"The Grey Heron"
"In Fields of Summer"

Produced and directed by Leita Hagemann Luchetti.

"Poetry Breaks," conceived by Leita Hagemann Luchetti and co-produced by Luchetti and WGBH New Television Workshop, is an ongoing series of over 100 thirty-second to four-minute spots presenting internationally known poets reading their work on location. These have aired individually on WGBH and public television stations across the country. The Workshop collaborated with Luchetti until its closing in 1993, at which point the works became co-productions of Luchetti and the larger WGBH Foundation.

"Poetry Breaks II," produced from 1991-1994, began airing on WGBH-TV in 1994, and was also broadcast by dozens of other public television stations throughout the country starting in 1994. Between 1995 and 1997, three new poets were taped for Poetry Breaks III.

Series Description
The New Television Workshop originated at WGBH, a public broadcasting station in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1974 to support the creation and development of experimental video art. This experimental programming included dance, drama, music, performance and visual arts on video and film. As early as 1968, WGBH was committed to the development of video art through residency programs, with artists such as Nam June Paik, and the "Rockefeller Artists-in-Television" project. Many of these early works (pre-1974) were broadcast both locally and nationally.

As an umbrella for arts related programming, the Workshop included "Artist's Showcase, " "Frames of Reference, " "Dance for Camera, " "Poetry Breaks," and "New Television," as well as acquired arts programming. Individual works were created for "Visions," a series produced by WNET (New York), and "Alive From Off Center," a series produced by KTCA (St. Paul - Minneapolis). The Contemporary Art Television (CAT) Fund was co-founded by the Workshop and Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in the 1980's, to commission works by video artists. In 1993 the Workshop ceased production at WGBH.

See also: http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/NTW/FA/TITLES/Poetry78.HTML