Polis Is This

Polis is This (part one)

Polis is This (part two)

Polis is This (part three)

Polis is This (part four)

Polis is This (part five)

Polis is This (part six)

Use the film to help you respond to the prompts on the handout.
(Given in class. Pasted below.)
Be prepared to discuss in class.

Critical Viewing of Polis is This,

a documentary directed by Henry Ferrini

BEFORE VIEWING

Define Polis:

WHILE VIEWING

Identify some of the places shown in the film

Identify some of the people in the film

Identify some of the poems used in the film

WHILE VIEWING AND AFTER VIEWING JOT DOWN IDEAS ABOUT

Olson’s Childhood Relationship to Gloucester

The effect on Olson of the U.S. dropping the Nuclear Bomb & the Discovery of Buchenwald and other Concentration Camps

Olson’s View of Wholistic Knowledge and Wholistic Education (“The Present” a course at Black Mountain College)

Olson’s View of Writing Poetry (Projective Verse; Robert Creeley: “we began to respond to what was happening…a much more active way of proceeding”; “form is never more than an extension of content”)

Olson’s Cosmology (study of the universe and man’s place in it) (Robert Creeley: “men could care about the kind of world they live in…why kind of world are men and women caring to have.”)

Olson’s View of changes in Gloucester in the 1960s and our role—the citizen’s role—in those changes

The implication of Olson’s thinking upon our relationship to our polis (immediate world) and cosmos (large world) today