Film
Polis is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place
Airing now on PBS
From its first shot of an eye with a flashing iris that yields to light playing upon the ocean, Polis is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place, establishes itself as a meditation on the life and poetic vision of the 20th century American poet Charles Olson and his muse America’s oldest seaport, Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Writing in the Village Voice in 1983, author and cultural commentator Nick Tosches referred to Olson, the last director of the famed avant-garde Black Mountain College, as “one of the greatest our century has heard.” Olson’s manifesto Projective Verse inspired a generation of poets including William Carlos Williams, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, and the Beats. Olson is widely credited with coining the term “postmodern.”
Rather than unspool its subject’s life in a standard documentary narrative, Polis intersperses cinematic interpretations of Olson’s poetry with interviews with townspeople, scholars and poets such as Amiri Baraka, Diane Di Prima, and Jonathan Williams. These talking heads help provide an introduction to Olson’s life and legacy in context, but fail to capture the essence of the man. For that, the film leans on Olson’s poetry, as read by Olson and by John Malkovich. Voiceovers of Olson’s poems are juxtaposed with contemporary and historical images of the Gloucester harbor scenes they describe. While some of these shots of Gloucester are undeniably beautiful—and help capture the town’s unique character as America’s oldest seaport—they merely scratch the surface of Olson’s poetry. His work is too dense and complex to be revealed through this treatment.
The archival footage of Olson talking and reading his own poetry drives viewer attention. Olson, who stood six foot eight, doesn’t merely read his poems, he performs them. Casually pausing to take a drag from his cigarette or a sip from his beer, Olson reads in a husky whisper both cool and inspired. His expressive face and gestures make plain that for Olson poetry was a vital, physical process. In this footage, Olson’s poems become the high-energy constructs he intended them to be and it becomes clear why Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac called Olson “the great fire source.”
Polis will screen on WNET on April 24th at 2:30 a.m. as part of April is Poetry Month. A list of additional screenings on PBS affiliates nationwide can be found on the film’s website http://www.polisisthis.com.
Contributor
Elyssa EastElyssa East is the author of the forthcoming book Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in an Island Ghost Town.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Hell is a Place on Earth. Heaven is a Place in Your Head.
By Kathleen LangjahrMAY 2020 | ArtSeen
As COVID-19 continues to proliferate throughout New York City, forcing all art institutions to remain closed to the public, museums and galleries have been scrambling to convert their programming to an online-only format. A standout example of this adaptation is P.P.O.W.s current presentation, Hell is a Place on Earth. Heaven is a Place in Your Head.

Notes from a Sunken Third Place
By Jasmine WahiDEC 20-JAN 21 | Editor's Message
For this issue, I sought the company of colleagues/friends with whom Ive had numerous discussions on what is holding this nation backnot just in the Trump era, but as a whole. It is no secret that we are also at the cusp of a new digital era that reinforces binary thinking.

Allan Sekula: Labor’s Persistence
By Brett WallaceSEPT 2019 | ArtSeen
Inside Allan Sekulas exhibition, Labors Persistence at Marian Goodman Gallery, the five major works were unified by the artists exploration of working-class labor and ideology through descriptive photographic and textual accounts intended to open political dialogue.
29. (Saint Marks Place)
By Raphael RubinsteinNOV 2020 | The Miraculous
Having achieved by his early 30s far more success than he could have reasonably hoped for when he first arrived in New York as a Midwest college dropouthis byline appears regularly in the Times and the Village Voice and he has published several well-received poetry collectionsa poet-art critic decides that its time to choose: poetry or art criticism.