An entire universe in a single line

“May the Fourth be with you.” The phrase, a beloved pun for Star Wars fans, rolls off the tongue with its own gravity — playful yet oddly reverent. This year, I found myself caught in its orbit, thinking about it even on the fourth of July. Not for its sci-fi charm, because, honestly, I don’t know enough about the movies, but for what it stirred in me: a reminder that poetry and film are not galaxies apart. In fact, they often share a screen and a soul. Poetry and cinema are both visual, compressed, and obsessive in their pursuit of emotion. A poem, like a film scene, can suggest an entire world with a single line. A cut in editing, a metaphor in verse, and we find ourselves standing in front of magic, a sudden transformation.

One of my favourite love poems is WH Auden’s Funeral Blues. “He was my North, my South, my East and West,/My working week and my Sunday rest,/My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;/I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.”

In the hit movie Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), John Hannah’s character recites this poem, changing the tone of the film. The beating heart of this movie is no longer light-hearted. It takes on such gravitas. Did the movie contribute to the growing interest in Auden in popular culture? I think so. Another poet who became even more iconic is Walt Whitman, immortalised by Robin Williams in Dead Poets’ Society (1989). Whitman’s poem, O Captain, My Captain, written for Abraham Lincoln, becomes a symbol of rebellion, of loyalty towards and respect for a beloved teacher, and will forever be synonymous with the movie. In Interstellar (2014), Dylan Thomas’s iconic Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, recited by Michael Caine, serves as a leitmotif. Resist death, fight against it, let humanity soar — the message comes through with “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

If you’re a fan of Richard Linklater’s oeuvre, then you’ve undoubtedly seen the Before Trilogy (1995-2013), those moody and meditative masterpieces on chance and deep conversations. All through the movies, I felt the presence of Ithaka, CP Cavafy’s poem. The poem preaches the slow journey, the savouring of every moment, focusing on the travel, not the destination. It’s connected to the ethos of the movies, I think, and when I read, “…don’t be afraid of them:/you’ll never find things like that on your way/as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,/as long as a rare excitement/stirs your spirit and your body”, I feel the warmth of the sunlight the movies are suffused with. 

I was delighted when I watched Dame Judi Dench quote Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses in a pivotal scene in Skyfall (2012). “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” What are the chances of seeing a classical poem in a Bond film? I was both stirred and shaken by the gravity of that moment.

James Franco played Allen Ginsberg in the 2010 movie, Howl. But poems aren’t always so obvious in films. There’s The Thin Red Line (1998) and the use of the voiceover like a long elegy, a dirge to war, nature, and mortality. And, what would Pyaasa (1957) be without poetry?  I ask myself: What kind of poem would I write for a movie? A soaring pastoral for Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (2004)? A ghazal for Pather Panchali (1955)? A sonnet for Casablanca (1942)? A limerick for Barfi (2012)? A villanelle for The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)?

Sometimes we stay in our seats, long after the lights have come on, unwilling, unable to break the spell of what we’ve seen. Movies mark us as much as poetry and music do. And all three have something in common — they are storehouses of memories. They hold a moment in the palm of their hands. They tell us how it is to feel.

So, this July, even if ‘May the Fourth...’ is long past, I invite you to watch a film like a poet. Pause in the silence. Linger in the image. Let the scene seep in, and when it’s over, ask yourself: What poem did this movie just write inside me?

World in Verse is a monthly column on the best of new (and old) poetry. The writer is a poet, teacher, voice actor and speaker. She has published two collections of poetry. Send your thoughts to her at [e-mail]