User:Gregorio Navonod/sandbox

A Late Style of Fire is an American feature-length documentary film, forthcoming in 2016, about the well-known American poet Larry Levis (September 30, 1946—May 8, 1996), directed by the award-winning poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker Michele Poulos and featuring music by the singer-songwriter Sam Beam of Iron & Wine.[1][2] The film depicts the life and career of Larry Levis as revealed in the words of his poetry as well as reflected in interviews with family members and in conversations with his mentors, colleagues, and fellow poets, including two U.S. Poet Laureates—Charles Wright and Levis’s mentor, the late Philip Levine—as well as David St. John, Carolyn Forché, Carol Muske-Dukes, Gerald Stern, David Wojahn, Colleen J. McElroy, Gregory Donovan, Kathleen Graber, and more.

A Late Style of Fire explores the intensities of contemporary poetry by probing a central question raised in the life story of Larry Levis: is self-destruction an inescapable aspect of choosing a serious commitment to art? To answer that question, the documentary presents in detail the singular facts of the life of Levis, revealing the risks and pleasures he took in writing poetry and how his work came to be influential in the literary community. At the same time, the film reports on the current state of contemporary American poetry more generally. The film features footage of the California landscapes and the San Joaquin Valley where Levis was raised among the vineyards and orchards of his family’s home ranch near Parlier, California and where he worked alongside immigrant and migrant laborers until he left to earn an undergraduate degree from Fresno State College in 1968, then a master’s degree from Syracuse University in 1970, and ultimately a Ph.D. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop of the University of Iowa in 1974. The film also covers aspects of his sometimes controversial academic career during his stints teaching at the University of Missouri, the University of Utah, and finally at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, where he was working on a final collection of poetry, Elegy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), when he died on May 8 1996, at the age of 49.