My neighbor, colleague and one of my dearest friends, Andrea Baker, is the subject of the documentary A Rubberband is an Unlikely Instrument. The documentary, made by Matt Boyd, is a quiet meditation of Andrea's marriage (now ended) to the talented musician Walter Baker. This piece of cinema reflects the vision of a wonderful filmmaker, who studied with Jem Cohen. The film has been recently discussed/reviewed in Filmmaker and Variety and The Village Voice. People who do not know cinema might review it as "tedious" but those who love Anges Varda and others, will adore it for it's beauty.
One crucial thing that the reviewerd are not mentioning is Andrea's work as a poet. Andrea and I met through poetry shortly before she was chosen by Claudia Rankine for the Poetry Society Chapbook Fellowship. She has essays pertaining to marriage Here and poetics Here. Her visual poetry appears in the Current Omni-Verse and her second collection will be published in 2013 by OmniDawn Press.
I hope those interested in the film take the time to look at Andrea's work. Like the film, like Andrea, her work is a great lyric.
3 comments:
i haven't seen it yet, but it looks great, and i intend to. i'm not surprised the poetry isn't mentioned in reviews. i have to say i was a little miffed by the promotional blurb, which refers to the brilliant Andrea Baker, as "his wife... (a poet)" -- an afterthought, addendum, with with her profession in parentheses. Oh well, we women, and specially we women poets are used to it.
but i loved the trailer, in which Baker, reading one of her most stunning poems, stars.
i haven't seen it yet, but it looks great, and i intend to. i'm not surprised though that the poetry isn't mentioned in any of the reviews you've seen. i was a little miffed, i must admit, by the promotional blurb that accompanied the trailer, where the brilliant Andrea Baker is referred to as "his wife...(a poet)" -- dependent clause, with her profession in parentheses. i dunno-- maybe as a woman poet myself, in a tight community of respected women poets, i've been assuming too much, but that sounds like some kind of retrograde BS to me.
Hi Miranda,
This is a great comment. You should email Andrea about it! She recently did make a web page andreabaker.us and I think they were going to link to it.
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