www.oldfamilymovies.com

CELEBRATE: Family, Traditional American Values,
Childhood Recollection, Spiritual Communion with Ancestors, Memory of Times Past

OLD FAMILY MOVIES: POETRY VIDEO consists of a book of poems plus a 40-minute DVD, with ten videos of poems from the book. The videos are digital movies, consisting of the poet reading his poems accompanied by slideshows, old movie footage from the 1930s, photographs dating from the 1920s through the 90s, and animated text. They are a new form of personal memory, produced by mixing the traditional genre of nostalgic, performed lyric with 21st Century, visual technology.

The DVD includes the following videos, ranging from 3 to 12 minutes: “Morgan Park, 1889,” “My Mother's Kindergarten Classroom,” “Mother, Rhea Kirschten,” “Mickleberry’s Log Cabin Restaurant,” “Old Family Movies,” “My Father’s Tie Rack,” ”Unwrapping Christmas Ornaments,” “Hudson Avenue,” “My Father’s Death Certificate,” and “Minnie Minoso” [Chicago White Sox].

“My Mother’s Kindergarten Classroom" is a joyous look at the details of an old kindergarten classroom, where the poet’s mother taught on the South Side of Chicago for 40 years. “My Father’s Death Certificate” is a 12-minute, grieving ritual, in which the poet recalls his love for a father, still missed and loved many years after death. “Minnie Minoso” is a tribute to the nostalgic memory of baseball, centering on the left fielder who played for the Chicago White Sox in the 1950s.

Most important to note: OLD FAMILY MOVIES is not only about the poet’s family; it is about your family.

 MY MOTHER’S KINDERGARDEN CLASSROOM
                    Esmond School, Chicago
If you walk down the hall, you can still hear the music.
She will play it for you, again and again, year after year:
the same songs you heard when you were five.
Listen.  Listen harder.
You can hear it all, every note, every dance step
when it was easy for your to lift your legs, clap your hands,
and skip sideways around the painted circle
in the middle of her room.
If you don’t return, now and then, to the Esmond School,
your hearing grows faint with those melodies; the smell
of City-of-Chicago varnish evaporates like an oasis
in the sandbox;
your farsightedness no longer daydreams the warm,
inner mysteries
of the cloakroom, where she stored the secrets
of mismatched galoshes and the key to chocolate milk.
If you won’t spend
a minute sitting around the scuffed, red circle of time,
legs crossed, waiting for recess, you will never rise
to the occasion
when music and memory call your name for the roll
of sudden invention, with a bright, silver star for attendance.
To return, all you need do is stand up, face the flag,
and sing three times,
“Good morning, Mrs. Kirschten.  how do you do?”
She will begin her class--even as safety scissors cut
childhood from you hands--with “The Pledge of allegiance”
and “My Country tis of Thee,”
then send you back home on your first day for lunch
with a blue-green yellow-purple picture of three smiling
paper daisies
and my mother’s hand-played, musical note pinned to your sleeve
for the rest of your life:
        “As I was walking down the street,
                   A little friend I chanced to meet.
        Hi ho.  Hi ho.  Hi ho.   Hi ho.
                     A riggedy jig and away we go.”