Poetry in motion picture
Worcester-born poet immortalized in new film
By Chris Mellen

The polis was the ideal city-state to the Ancient Greeks. What makes the poet Charles Olson’s adopted North Shore island hometown of Gloucester a polis? How important is the history and geography of a place to the way we perceive and live in that place? Would Olson have written his epic “Maximus” if he stayed in Worcester, the city of his birth? These are some of the questions Henry Ferrini asks in his film Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place, free screenings of which begin in Worcester tomorrow.

“Worcester is a big city,” says Ferrini, a Gloucester native. “Gloucester is a small town — 30,000 people — you can walk around it, you can get to know it, the whole of it. The citizens have a relationship with this place.”

In the academic world, Charles Olson is considered one of the prominent poetic voices of the 20th century (who “affected and infected” Beat poets such as Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso), but how is he remembered in the town that was the subject of much of his work?

“That’s one of the one of the reasons I wanted to make the film as a Charles Olson primer, especially for the people of Gloucester,” the filmmaker explains. “I wanted to be able to have the film be available in the local schools so kids know the heritage they are heir to.”

One of the most moving scenes in the film shows both the lasting impression that Charles Olson made on the townspeople and also debunks the myth that people don’t care about poetry. Ferrini discusses the interview segment with diner owner Michelle Prendergast, who remembers Olson with a quote from Emily Dickinson “That one in particular was just incredible,” Ferrini says of the unprompted bit of on-screen synchronicity. “She had memorized it 40 years ago but it still has an impact on her now.”

Just as Ferrini’s previous film Lowell Blues evokes the writing of Jack Kerouac through music and images of the city of Lowell, Kerouac’s birthplace, so did Polis Is This capture Gloucester.

“There were some similarities in style,” Ferrini explains, “to take spoken and written word and make a visual meditation so the images flow over you while you are listening to the poetry.”

As Johnny Depp read Kerouac in Lowell Blues, John Malkovich brings a haunting resonance to Olson’s work in Polis Is This. There are some differences between the two films, however, most notably that for most of the audience, there is no frame of reference for Olson.

“We wanted to give people a context — a biographical arc from cradle to grave.” In addition to portraying Olson’s words and his life, the film illustrates the town and the people who, to this day, make their living from the ocean, which, along with the Gloucester landscape, is a major player in the film and not merely a backdrop.

“Charles Olson was a poet of landscape,” Ferrini states. “He started as a Melville scholar, writing his first book Call Me Ishmael while looking out the window in the same house where he lived from 1957 to his death [in 1970]. He saw that ocean as what connected him to the rest of the world — that image was a huge part of his writing.”

That landscape was one that Olson was deeply committed to preserving, and in the film, many of the poems and letters show his concern over the fate of the town’s history.

“In one of the letters, Olson was bemoaning the loss of his beautiful house that was being torn down, writing, ‘I hate those that take away that do not have as good to offer.’”

Given that both Olson and Ferrini are so passionate about the history and geography of place, what would an audience that is not comprised of native New Englanders or students of poetry take away from this film?

“Gloucester is the microcosm, and our hope was that anyone in any part of the country would see their own town…look beneath the surface, try to understand that to make an impact, you really have to dig way in. Olson was a Harvard-trained historian, tracing history from the ice age to the shopping mall and finding a connection between all our communities.”

Both Olson and Ferrini would agree that in these times, we need that message more than ever; that since the politicians have lost their vision, it is now up to the citizens — and the poets — to lead the way.•••

FIND MORE DETAILED INFORMATION ON CHARLES OLSON HERE.