1302: One Shies at the Prospect of Raising Yet Another Defense of Cannibalism by Josh Bell

The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

American Public Media

Arts, Performing Arts

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

Today’s poem is One Shies at the Prospect of Raising Yet Another Defense of Cannibalism by Josh Bell. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

Around what has become known as “awards season,” casual conversations are abuzz with talk of the year’s movies. This week’s episodes explore how poets take up movies as subjects — how the two art forms intertwine to make us feel more closely this life we share.

In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem whimsically plays with faux intimacy as an aesthetic experience, and with the value of cinema, how our psychic needs for understanding are either thwarted or are actualized.”

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Transcript

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0:00.0	Around what has become known as award season, casual conversations are buzzed with Talk of the Year's movies.
0:08.7	This yearly moment of cinematic recognition reminds us just how valuable the art form and the artists who make it are.
0:18.2	Movies are an invitation to live in someone else's shoes, to learn, to experience, to
0:24.6	empathize. We need these skills to nurture a culture of community now more than ever. This
0:32.5	week's episodes explore how poets take up movies as subjects, how the two art forms intertwine to make us feel more closely this life we share.
1:00.2	I'm Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.
1:15.1	In the color purple, Shug Avery is estranged from her preacher father. She's a free-spirited woman who drinks, loves indiscriminately, and sings at a local juke joint.
1:24.1	One Sunday morning, while belting out a blues tune, she hears the choir at her father's nearby church.
1:32.3	Shilk then leads the revelers, musicians and all, down the road, and sings her way back into her father's arms, literally.
1:42.8	The movie is a deeply emotional journey. It's one of my favorite scenes. It is
1:49.4	sentimental. My brother and I saw the color purple on a Sunday. We arrived just before it start.
1:58.5	We sat in the first row.
2:06.3	We strained our necks to look up and were totally engulfed by flickering images depicting rural Georgia in the 1940s.
2:10.8	Something about the seating made the film even more intimate.
2:17.2	The color purple is a story about forgiveness and redemption.
2:22.2	As someone who witnessed domestic violence, the movie was consoling and empowering.
2:29.1	I heard muffled crying and sniffling throughout the theater behind me.
2:38.3	I too teared up. A friend once said, Just because a movie taps into our emotions does not make it a good film. I argued the purpose of
2:47.1	art is to make us feel. He argued for films that made us think. Perhaps the best art
2:55.9	balances the two. Today's poem whimsically plays with faux intimacy as an aesthetic experience,
3:04.9	and with the value of cinema, how our psychic needs for understanding are either
3:10.9	thwarted or are actualized. One shies at the prospect of raising yet another defense of
	...

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