Rather than pointing a so-called poet noir to a film, what is almost always an artificial manufacture of Hollywood operating in cliches, I would be more inclined to point the poet to the story behind the film. Dashiell Hammett for example. His Sam Spade regularly predicated a story’s denouement on intense dialogue, in which moments Spade was less the tough guy working in Cliff Eastwood type one liners and more the interlocuter. A Hammett novel has always put me in mind of a tragedy written by Sophocles: there action gets carried in dialogue.

Then there is Raymond Chandler, another creator, mostly by default, of Hollywood’s film noir. I had read most of his novels, many of his short stories, his classic essay on detective fiction, then by chance I came upon his poetry written before he emmigrated to America from England. This was key. I got he was Georgian (as in Edward Marsh’s group) in his poetic inclinations and agriculturally-centric. I figure his move to California with his mother was traumatic, environmentally traumatic. And I figure his penchant for description and mood painting imprinted all of his novels. Name me one Hollywood production of a Chandler story that brings out Chandler’s many descriptors of environment.

Since the movie “Double Indimnenty” has been exampled I got one more example to cite of Hollywood’s bastardization of lit. I had read Cain’s novel before I finally got around to seeing a replay of the movie. I was blown away by the travesty. It is a bad movie trading on a great story. (I figure that Caine was the best of the bunch.) I guess I also figure that any poet looking to model herself or himself on Hollywood cliches is screwed from the start.

Terreson

Well done and Bravo!!! Bravo!!!