"Poets live the lives all of us live, " says Bill Moyers, "with one big
difference. They have the power--the power of the word--to create a
world of thoughts and emotions other can share. We only have to learn to
listen."
In a series of fascinating conversations with thirty-four American
poets, "The Language Of Life" celebrates language in its "most exalted,
wrenching, delighted, and concentrated form, " and its unique power to
re-create the human experience: falling in love, facing death, leaving
home, playing basketball, losing faith, finding God. Listening to Linda
McCarriston's award-winning poems about a child trapped in a violent
home, or to Jimmy Santiago Baca explaining how words changed his life in
prison, or to David Mura describing his Japanese American grandfather's
experience in relocation camps, or to Sekou Sundiata stitching the magic
of his childhood church in Harlem to the African tradition of
storytelling, or to Gary Snyder invoking the natural wonder of mountains
and rivers, or to Adrienne Rich calling for honesty in human relations,
all testify to the necessity and clarity of the poet's voice, and all
give hope that from such a wide variety of racial, ethnic, and religious
threads we might yet weave a new American fabric.
"'Listen, ' said the storytellers of old, 'listen and you shall
"hear,"'" explains Bill Moyers. "The Language Of Life" is a joyous,
life-affirming invitation to listen, learn, and experience the
exhilarating power of the spoken word.
