Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft

Fooling with Words is an intimate, inspirational celebration of language in its most exalted form and of the importance of poetry in our lives today. In dozens of poems and a series of fascinating conversations with poets of all stripes gathered for the acclaimed Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, Fooling with Words brings poetry to life for the reader.

Bill Moyers has been covering the poetry beat for more than a decade, and in the fall of 1998 he returned to the Dodge Festival with his public television cameras, capturing the performances of the poets, and, in interviews with them, their dazzling array of images, metaphors, and emotions. Coleman Barks not only reads from his translations of Rumi, but also shares the poems that he wrote in tribute to his "most beautiful granddaughter." Mark Doty talks with Moyers about "poetry's great power to preserve, its ability to take a moment in time and hold it forever." Jane Hirshfield talks about the influence on her poetry of the eight years she studied Zen, including three years in a monastery when she didn't write at all.

Moyers listens to these and other poets including Lorna Dee Cervantes, Deborah Garrison, Paul Muldoon, Marge Piercy, Kurtis Lamkin, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Stanley Kunitz, and Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, and weaves another invaluable and enjoyable tapestry of poems with the memorable voices of the poets themselves. Anyone who loves poetry or is seeking a special gift will cherish Fooling with Words.