Informed by the criticism of iconic filmmaker Pier Pasolini, The Cinema of Poetry offers spirited explorations of poetry's influence on classic films by Dimitri Kirsanoff, Ingmar Bergman, and Andrey Tarkovsky. It also highlights how avant-garde films made by Joseph Cornell, Lawrence Jordan, Jerome Hiler, Gregory Markopoulos, and others found rich, unexpected sources of inspiration in a diverse group of poets that includes Stéphane Mallarmé, Emily Dickinson, H.D., Ezra Pound, Robert Duncan, John Ashbery, and Aeschylus. Written with verve and panache, it represents the culmination of P. Adams Sitney's career-long fascination with the intersection of poetry, film, and the avant-garde.

P. Adams Sitney is Professor of Visual Arts in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. His previous books include Eyes Upside Down and Visionary Film.

Preface Introduction: An Autobiography of Enthusiasms I Pier Paolo Pasolini and "The Cinema of 'Poetry'" Dimitri Kirsanoff's Ménilmontant Ingmar Bergman's Primal Scene Andrey Tarkovsky's Concept of Poetry II Poetry and the American Avant-garde Cinema The Dialectict of Experience in Joseph Cornell's Films Lawrence Jordan's Magical Instructions Stan Brakhage's Poetics Nathaniel Dorsky, Jerome Hiler, and the Polyvalent Film Gregory J. Markopoulos and the Temenos