POETRY IN MOVIES: A PARTIAL LIST
Stacey Harwood
What follows is a listing of the appearance of recognizable, often canonical, poems, or excerpts from poems, in mainly American and British sound films. The catalog is necessarily incomplete; readers are invited to submit new entries to the journal at mqr@umich.edu or to Stacey Harwood at shoshana@mindspring.com. The filmography will be revised and updated regularly.
Ground rules. Movies entirely or mainly in verse, such as Shakespeare's plays and Greek tragedies or Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood (1972) and T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral (1952), cannot be accommodated in this format. The same is true of movies set in modern times that feature a Shakespearean actor, such as To Be or Not To Be (1942, 1983), A Double Life (1947), The Goodbye Girl (1977), The Dresser (1983), and Looking for Richard (1996). Movies about poets are another special category: Glenda Jackson recites many poems by Stevie Smith in the film Stevie (1978), just as bits and pieces of Francois Villon's poems appear in If I Were King (1938), Sylvia Plath's poems appear in Sylvia (2003), Langston Hughes's in Looking for Langston (1989), T. S. Eliot's in Tom & Viv (1994), Dorothy Parker's in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), Arthur Rimbaud's in Total Eclipse (1995), and Shakespeare's in Shakespeare in Love (1998). Numerous poems by Maya Angelou are spoken in Poetic Justice (1993) and Sherman Alexie inserts several of his own poems into the soundtrack of Smoke Signals (1998). Films featuring slam, hip-hop, and spoken-word performance pieces seem to belong to a separate category as well.
The Bible, too, is a special case. Occasionally a few lines will be embedded artfully in a film, as when the younger self of Elizabeth McGovern reads a few verses of "The Song of Songs" to her unworthy "beloved" in Once upon a Time in America (1984), or when the terrified rape/murder victim in Frenzy (1972) whispers out Psalm 91. But biblical texts are so frequent in films that the subject requires a filmography of its own. Likewise, films with abundant quotations of a line or two from different poets are better noted in a separate space like this one than parsed out in a listing. Examples include Gene Wilder's manic recital in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) of quotations from Shakespeare (Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Romeo and Juliet), as well as from William Blake, John Keats, John Masefield, and Ogden Nash, and Dead Poets Society (1989), in which lines by Abraham Cowley, Robert Frost, Robert Herrick, Vachel Lindsay, William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Lord Tennyson, and Lord Byron fly through the air.
Addison, Joseph
"The Campaign"
My Darling Clementine, 1946
Apollinaire, Guillaume
"L'amour"
Peau d'ane, 1970
Arnold, Matthew
"Dover Beach"
Without Love, 1945
The Anniversary Party, 2001
Auden, W. H.
"As I Walked Out One Evening"
Before Sunrise, 1995
"Funeral Blues"
Four Weddings and a Funeral, 1994
"Letter to R.H.S. Crossman, Esq."
Away from Her, 2006
"Night Mail"
Night Mail, 1936
Baudelaire, Charles
"The Albatross"
A Very Long Engagement, 2004
"The Jewels"
La Letrice [The Reader], 1988
Biermann, Wolf
"The Girl from Stuttgart"
Germany in Autumn, 1978
Bishop, Elizabeth
"One Art"
In Your Shoes, 2005
Blake, William
"The Tyger"
The End of the Affair, 1955
The Horse's Mouth, 1958
Blade Runner, 1982
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, 2002
"America: A Prophecy"
"The Fly"
Blade Runner, 1982
"Jerusalem" ["And did those feet in ancient time"]
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, 1962
Privilege, 1967
Chariots of Fire, 1981
Calendar Girls, 2003
"The Sick Rose"
Educating Rita, 1983
"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
Bull Durham, 1988
"The Everlasting Gospel" ["The vision of Christ that thou dost see..."]
"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
Dead Man, 1995
"Auguries of Innocence"
Dead Man, 1995
In the Bedroom, 2001
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, 2001
"The Little Black Boy"
The Horse's Mouth, 1958
Bradstreet, Anne
"To My Dear and Loving Husband"
Le Divorce, 2003
Brecht, Bertolt
"Germany Pale Mother"
Germany Pale Mother, 1980
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
"Aurora Leigh," ii
Take the High Ground, 1953
"A Child's Grave at Florence"
Tea with Mussolini, 1999
Browning, Robert
"Sordello"
The Barretts of Wimpole Street, 1934
"The Pied Piper of Hamelin"
The Sweet Hereafter, 1997
Bukowski, Charles
"2 p.m. Beer"
"Old Man, Dead in a Room"
Barfly, 1987
Burns, Robert
"My Love Is like a Red Red Rose"
Side Street, 1950
"Upon Afton Water" ["Flow gently, sweet Afton..."]
Pride and Prejudice, 1940
Byron, [George Gordon] Lord
"She Walks in Beauty"
Blockade, 1938
Jamaica Inn, 1939
"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," IV.178 ["There is a pleasure in the pathless woods"]
The Bridges of Madison County, 1995
Don Juan
Don Juan de Marco, 1995
Carroll, Lewis
"The Walrus and the Carpenter"
Today We Live, 1933
The Clairvoyant, 1934
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, 1935
Chaucer, Geoffrey
"Prologue"
"Wife of Bath's Tale" ["the woe that is in marriage"]
Sylvia, 2003
Clough, Arthur Hugh
"Dipsychus"
The Quiet American, 2002
Cocteau, Jean
"Les Muses"
Peau d'ane, 1970
Coleridge, Hartley
"Sonnet VII" ["Is love a fancy or a feeling"]
Sense and Sensibility, 1995
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
"Epitaph on an Infant"
Finding Forrester, 2000
"Kubla Khan"
Citizen Kane, 1941
Pandaemonium, 2000
Congreve, William
from The Mourning Bride ["Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned..."]
Adam's Rib, 1949
Corso, Gregory
"Marriage"
Reality Bites, 1994
Cowper, William
"The Castaway"
Sense and Sensibility, 1995
cummings, e. e.
"i carry your heart with me"
In Your Shoes, 2005
"somewhere i have never travelled gladly beyond"
Hannah and Her Sisters, 1986
Dante Alighieri
"Vita Nuova, III"
Hannibal, 2001
Dickinson, Emily
"Ample make this Bed"
Sophie's Choice, 1982
"Because I could not stop for Death"
Crimes and Misdemeanors, 1989
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers"
Quiz Show, 1994
Autumn in New York, 2000
"Two butterflies went out at noon"
Autumn in New York, 2000
"We never know how high we are"
Seabiscuit, 2003
Donne, John
Holy Sonnet X ["Death Be Not Proud"]
The Exorcist III, 1990
Douglas, Lord Alfred
"In Summer"
"Two Loves"
Wilde, 1997
Dowson, Ernest
"Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam"
Days of Wine and Roses, 1962
Dryden, John
translation from Horace, Book 3, Ode 29 ["Happy the man, and happy he alone..."]
Tom Jones, 1963
Eliot, T. S.
"East Coker"
Butley, 1974
"The Hollow Men"
Apocalypse Now, 1979
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Love and Death, 1975
Apocalypse Now, 1979
Till Human Voices Wake Us, 2002
The Fog of War, 2003
"Little Gidding" ["We shall not cease from exploration"]
The Fog of War, 2003
"Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats"
Logan's Run, 1976
"The Waste Land" ["April is the cruelest month..."]
Without Love, 1945
Frost, Robert
"Death of the Hired Man"
Frenzy, 1972
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Telefon, 1977
Dreamcatcher, 2003
"Nothing Gold Can Stay"
The Outsiders, 1983
"The Road Not Taken" [in Italian]
Down by Law, 1986
Garcia Lorca, Federico
"Ballad of a Sleepwalker"
Revenge, 1990
"Backwaters"
In the Cut, 2003
Ginsberg, Allen
"Howl"
Hairspray, 1988
Hackers, 1995
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
"Erlkonig"
Burning Secret, 1988
Gray, Thomas
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
Bull Durham, 1988
Gresham, Joy
"Snow in Madrid"
Shadowlands, 1993
Hayes, J. Milton
"The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God"
St. Martin's Lane, 1938
Heber, Reginald
"Hymns" ("Where every prospect pleases / And only man is vile")
Born to Kill, 1947
Henley, W. E.
"England, My England"
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, 1935
"Invictus"
King's Row, 1942
Herrick, Robert
"Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may"
A Prairie Home Companion, 2006
"Upon Julia's Clothes"
Julia, 1977
Hood, Thomas
"Silence"
The Piano, 1993
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
"Spring and Fall"
Vision Quest, 1985
Housman, A. E.
"A Shropshire Lad" (part 40) ["Into my heart an air that kills"]
Walkabout, 1971
"To an Athlete Dying Young"
Out of Africa, 1985
"When I Was One and Twenty"
Stage Struck, 1958
Hughes, Langston
"Montage of a Dream Deferred"
A Raisin in the Sun, 1961
Jonson, Ben
"To Celia" ["Drink to me only with thine eyes"]
Ghosts on the Loose,1943
Keats, John
from Endymion ["A thing of beauty is a joy forever"]
Portrait of Jenny, 1948
White Men Can't Jump, 1992
"To Autumn"
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1969
Bridget Jones's Diary, 2001
"La Belle Dame Sans Merci"
In the Cut, 2003
"When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be"
Brief Encounter, 1945
The Track of the Cat, 1954
Kenyon, Jane
"Let Evening Come"
In Her Shoes, 2005
Key, Francis Scott
"The Star-Spangled Banner"
Since You Went Away, 1944
Khayyam, Omar
The Rubaiyat, 7 ["The Bird of Time has but a little way..."]
Morning Glory, 1933
Unfaithful, 2002
The Rubaiyat, 46 ["O threats of hell and hopes of Paradise..."]
Duel in the Sun, 1946
Kipling, Rudyard
"Gunga Din"
Gunga Din, 1939
Two-Way Stretch, 1959
Sylvia, 2003
"The Conundrum of the Workshops"
F for Fake, 1974
"Tomlinson" ["the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one"]
Lifeboat, 1944
"If"
St. Martin's Lane, 1938
"The Way through the Woods"
Finding Forrester, 2000
Larkin, Philip
"Ignorance"
Holy Smoke, 1999
Lawrence, D. H.
"Self-Pity"
G.I. Jane, 1997
Lazarus, Emma
"The New Colossus"
Saboteur, 1942
Since You Went Away, 1944
Levertov, Denise
"At David's Grave"
Any Mother's Son, 1997
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
"The Song of Hiawatha"
Here We Go Again, 1942
Desk Set, 1957
Spider Man 2, 2004
"My Lost Youth"
In the Bedroom, 2001
Lowell, James Russell
"Once to Every Man and Nation"
Kid Glove Killer, 1942
Marlowe, Christopher
"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, 1939
Come Live with Me, 1941
Richard III, 1995
"Hero and Leander" ["Whoever loved that loved not at first sight"]
Intolerable Cruelty, 2003
The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, V, 100 ["...make me immortal with a kiss"]
The Ruling Class, 1972
Marvell, Andrew
"To His Coy Mistress"
A Farewell to Arms, 1932
A Matter of Life and Death, 1946
The 25th Hour, 2002
"The Definition of Love"
The Daytrippers, 1996
Merriam, Eve
"Coward"
Home of the Brave, 1949
Millay, Edna St. Vincent
"Sonnet: Love Is Not All"
Take the High Ground, 1953
"First Fig"
A River Runs through It, 1992
"God's World"
"To a Young Poet"
Autumn in New York, 2000
"Elaine"
Without Love, 1945
Miller, Alice Duer
"The White Cliffs"
The White Cliffs of Dover, 1944
Milton, John
"Lycidas" ["Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new"]
The Horse's Mouth, 1958
from Paradise Lost IV.846 ["Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful
goodness is"]
The Crow, 1994
from "Comus" [Sabrina fair..."]
Sabrina, 1995
Montejo, Eugenio
"The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer"
21 Grams, 2003
Neruda, Pablo
"The Dead Woman"
Truly Madly Deeply, 1991
"The Enigmas"
Mindwalk, 1991
Various poems
Il Postino, 1994
Owen, Wilfred
"The Parable of the Old Man and the Young"
"Dulce et Decorum Est"
"Greater Love"
Regeneration, 1997
Parker, Dorothy
"Resume"
Girl, Interrupted, 1999
"Midnight"
Autumn in New York, 2000
Poe, Edgar Allan
"The Raven"
The Raven, 1935
Young Guns, 1988
The Crow, 1994
"Ulalume"
Lolita, 1962
The Ladykillers, 2004
"El Dorado"
El Dorado, 1967
"Alone"
The Krays, 1990
"Annabel Lee"
Stage Struck, 1958
Play Misty for Me, 1971
Holes, 2003
"To Helen"
The Ladykillers, 2004
Pope, Alexander
"Eloisa to Abelard"
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004
Pudney, John
"For Johnny"
"Missing"
Way to the Stars, 1945
Raleigh, Walter
"His Pilgrimage"
A Matter of Life and Death, 1946
"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, 1939
Richard III, 1995
Rilke, Rainer Maria
"The Panther,"
Another Woman, 1988
Awakenings, 1990
"Archaic Torso of Apollo"
Another Woman, 1988
Rossetti, Christina
"Remember"
Kiss Me Deadly, 1955
Sassoon, Siegfried
"Base Details"
Regeneration, 1997
Scott, Walter
Marmion VI.30 ["O woman! in our hours of ease"]
The Prisoner of Zenda, 1937
Marmion VI.532-3 ["O what a tangled web we weave"]
The Perfect Man, 2005
"Love as a Theme of Poets"
A Matter of Life and Death, 1946
"Patriotism"
Groundhog Day, 1993
Seeger, Alan
"I Have a Rendezvous with Death"
Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966
Shakespeare, William
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2 ["How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable..."]
Lola Montes, 1955
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 1 ["To be or not to be"]
Morning Glory, 1933
My Darling Clementine, 1946
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, 1991
Henry IV, Part 1
My Own Private Idaho, 1991
Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1
Too Much, Too Soon, 1958
Henry V [St. Crispin's Day speech]
Too Much, Too Soon, 1958
Tombstone, 1991
Renaissance Man, 1994
Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 2 ["The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars"]
Intolerable Cruelty, 2003
Good Night and Good Luck, 2005
Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2 ["Cowards die many times before their deaths"]
The Human Stain, 2003
Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2
Pinero, 2001
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5 ["Tomorrow and tomorrow...]
Smoke, 1995
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III, Scene 2 ["Jack shall have Jill"]
The Anniversary Party, 2001
Othello, Act 3, Scene 3 ["Oh, curse of marriage..."]
The Unfaithful, 1947
Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1
The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1934
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2 ["O Romeo, Romeo..."]
Morning Glory, 1933
This Land is Mine, 1943
Tea with Mussolini, 1999
Romeo and Juliet, various passages
Stage Struck, 1958
Tumbleweeds, 1999
The Tempest, Act 3, Scene 2 ["The isle is full of noises..."]
The Four Feathers, 1939
Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5 ["Some are born great..."]
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, 1944
Sonnet #29 ["When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes"]
In a Lonely Place, 1950
Sonnet #94 ["They that have power to hurt and will do none"]
A Map of the World, 1999
Sonnet #116 ["Let me not to the marriage of true minds"]
The Trouble with Harry, 1955
Sense and Sensibility, 1995
"Venus and Adonis" ["Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears"]
Intolerable Cruelty, 2003
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
"Adonais" 40 ["He has outsoared the shadow of our night"]
The Thin Man Goes Home, 1944
"Love's Philosophy"
In & Out, 1997
Siegel, Eli
"Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana"
Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana, 2005
Smith, Charlie
"The Meaning of Birds"
Blue Car, 2002
Smith, Stevie
"In My Dreams"
Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train, 1998
Spenser, Edmund
The Faerie Queene V, ii, 39 ["For whatsoever from one place doth fall..."]
Sense and Sensibility, 1995
Stevenson, Robert Louis
"Requiem"
They Were Expendable, 1945
The Horse's Mouth, 1958
"My House, I Say"
Undercurrent, 1946
"My Wife"
Tender Comrade, 1943
Tennyson, [Alfred] Lord
"The Charge of the Light Brigade"
The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1936
The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957
The Falcon and the Snowman, 1985
"Maud" III.23-5
The Thin Man Goes Home, 1944
"Crossing the Bar"
Finding Graceland, 1998
"The Lady of Shalott"
The Mirror Crack'd, 1980
"Tithonus"
Shadow of the Vampire, 2000
Thomas, Dylan
"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"
Back to School, 1986
Dangerous Minds, 1995
"And Death Shall Have No Dominion"
The Weight of Water, 2000
Solaris, 2002
Valery, Paul
"Le CimetiEre Marin"
The Victors, 1963
Verlaine, Paul
"Song of Autumn"
The Longest Day
Whitman, Walt
"The Untold Want"
Now, Voyager, 1942
Love and Death on Long Island, 1997
"I Sing the Body Electric"
Bull Durham, 1988
"Song of Myself"
Beautiful Dreamers, 1990
"Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking"
L.I.E., 2001
"Spontaneous Me"
The Notebook, 2004
"So Long"
The Notebook, 2004
"A Passage to India" ["Sail forth, steer for the deep waters only"]
Street Scene, 1931
"Goodbye, My Fancy"
Goodbye, My Fancy, 1951
Wilde, Oscar
"The Sphinx"
The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1945
"The Ballad of Reading Gaol"
Wilde, 1997
Williamson, Marianne
"A Return to Love"
Coach Carter, 2005
Wordsworth, William
"Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
Splendor in the Grass, 1961
Alice in Wonderland, 1966
A River Runs Through It, 1992
"Tintern Abbey"
Pandaemonium, 2000
Wylie, Elinor
"The Eagle and the Mole"
American Splendor, 2003
Yeats, W. B.
"Brown Penny"
Must Love Dogs, 2005
"When You are Old"
Peggy Sue Got Married, 1986
"He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"
84 Charing Cross Road, 1987
Equilibrium, 2002
"An Irish Airman Foresees His Death"
Memphis Belle, 1990
"The Stolen Child"
A. I.: Artificial Intelligence, 2001
Blue Car, 2002
"The Sorrow of Love"
Sylvia, 2003
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree"
Million Dollar Baby, 2004
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