‘Off the Page’ Features Poetry as a Performance Art

Matching an art form of the ages with the technology of the ‘90s, an entrepreneur has come up with “Off the Page: The First Video Poetry Magazine”--a videocassette featuring some of America’s best-known poets reading and discussing their work.

The mail-order “magazine” is the brainchild of New York actor Norman Rose, whose enthusiasm is palpable in his filmed introduction to the first edition. “Off the Page” grew from Rose’s perception of “a groundswell of interest in poetry all over the world” and the increasing emphasis on poetry as a performance art.

Poetry was “a performance art in the beginning, and we’re coming back to that” in current times, says Rose, who serves as the video magazine’s editor-in-chief.

The first issue features Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Wilbur at his Cummington, Mass., home, reciting verse and talking about his life in poetry; younger poets Carolyn Forche and Robert Pinsky discussing the sources of their work with venerable poet Louis Simpson; several poets giving animated readings of individual poems; some of Willa Cather’s work set to music by a contemporary composer and sung by ebullient baritone Stephen Kalm, and excerpts from the plays of poet Kenneth Koch. The second issue, due out in July, includes a profile of Maxine Kumin, Jason Robards performing Robert Frost’s work, the late Howard Nemerov’s verse play, “Cain,” and a segment by Louis Simpson on narrative poets.

Rose, who has appeared in plays on Broadway and Off-Broadway and currently works as a news promotion announcer for ABC, said in an interview that enthusiasm for his project stems from “not only being able to hear poets 30 years from now, but actually being able to see them.” Home video seemed the way to go, he said, because “at the moment, at any rate, videocassettes are where it’s at, for everything. People are buying and renting videocassettes instead of going to the opera and the theater or the movies, even.”

He teamed up with a production company, Primo Donna Productions Unlimited, to finance and produce the videos. Funding is set for the first three issues but Rose said he plans to seek grant support before proceeding to issue four.

Rose’s ideas for future video articles include a piece relating Elizabethan poetry to the music of its time, an on-camera collaboration between a poet and a composer and profiles of Richard Howard and Anthony Hecht. A multi-poet advisory board suggests many of the ideas for “Off the Page.”

Rose also hopes to conduct a “friendly contest” between a poet and an actor in which both would perform the poet’s work, and an audience would vote on which gave the best interpretation.

“I’m inclined to favor the professional performer, because I am one,” Rose said. “The poet simply doesn’t have the techniques an actor does. . . . On the other hand, who could read ‘The Wasteland’ better than T.S. Eliot?”

Jerry Chait, Primo Donna Productions vice president, said that sales thus far have been “fair,” with most orders coming from libraries, universities and high school English departments. Sales for the first issue ($29.95) have been brisker than subscriptions to the first three issues ($123.35). Issues two and three will cost $39.95 each if sold individually. Shipping is $4.50 per tape on one-tape orders.

Tapes can be ordered by check, money order or credit card from Off the Page, P.O. Box 40003, Fairfield, N.J. 07004-0003.