Paterson: How a Poet Lives in the World

I went to see the film Paterson (directed by Jim Jarmusch) this weekend. I think this film was a double rarity: it was not only a film about a poet, but the poet was a fictional character who is unlikely to ever become famous. In that regard it was very different from the beautiful Bright Star, which is about Keats and probably my favourite poetry film (not that I have many contenders.)

Paterson is a very quiet story about a man named Paterson (Adam Driver) who works as a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey. Paterson is also the title of an epic poem by William Carlos Williams, about the same city, and William Carlos Williams is the one real poet who gets quite a lot of time in the film. The film's Paterson goes to work and has a peaceful, loving relationship with his girlfriend (wife?) Laura (Goldshifteh Farahani). He writes poetry when he can and Laura encourages him, particularly as she is also artistic. There is also a dog, Marvin, who I must say was a consummate actor.

This is the quietest of films, and the plot twist - if it can be called a plot twist - was very obvious. The poetry was just ok (which is probably realistic). What made the film beautiful to me was the way in which it depicted a poet's perceptions of the world and the way they move through it. A poet is both more absent and more present in the world than other people, and Adam Driver's lovely performance depicted this perfectly. There was an interior-ness to the camerawork which was wonderful. We seemed to be seeing through the poet's eyes, in the way that poets notice certain things, pattern their worlds, and encounter situations in a way that seems to be almost synchronicity but is probably a form of confirmation bias leading to writing. All of this was done very perceptively through subtle camera angles. The moments of actual poetic creation, or the moments on the cusp of creation, also had a layered/surreal feel which contrasted with the other scenes.

Paterson isn't a perfect film but I thought that this portrayal of a artist's mind and the artistic process was quite rare and beautiful, and that it was worth seeing for those aspects alone.

"Twittering World": The Stone and the Star Joins Twitter

"Not here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world" wrote T S Eliot in 'Burnt Norton'. Even Keats, a long long time ago, had "gathering swallows twitter in the skies" (ok...I admit that's a stretch.)

In that spirit, The Stone and the Star has caved in and joined Twitter. You can find me under TheStoneAndTheStar or under username @stoneandthestar.

National Poetry Week (Why Not?) - 'Bright Star' by John Keats

BRIGHT STAR (John Keats)


Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No - yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.


This poem has, I think, already been over-posted this week for National Poetry Day's 'Stars' theme, but to say it's overexposed is a bit like saying you shouldn't visit Paris or Prague because they are touristy. Anyway, I think that the effects of National Poetry Day should carry on for at least a few days.

'Bright Star' is probably one of the most beautiful poems ever written. The final lines mirror the opening section; first the poem depicts the faithful star watching tenderly over the almost-personified earth, and the second section depicts the poet's feelings for his beloved, far closer than the distant star and our planet.

Keats was only 25 when he died, just a little older than Keith Douglas. Again, I wonder what he could have gone on to achieve, given that very few can rival what he had already written at a young age.

I loved Jane Campion's 2009 film Bright Star, which depicts the love between Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), and concludes with the grief-stricken Fanny reciting the poem after receiving news of Keats's death. It is a very quiet and lovely film, romantic but very believable. Keats and Fanny have contrasting personalities; he is friendly but shy, while she is more outgoing and flirtatious. They don't fall in love instantly and the sad facts of Keats's poverty, and the illness which is to kill him, constantly intrude. For me, it was a relatively rare romantic film in that it was about real people but I was able to believe that this might actually have been how it was.