The Reel and the Paperback
Refracted Ekphrases
By Carl Landauer
These sixty poems, in the new form of “refracted ekphrases,” explore the alchemic interaction of literary works and their film adaptations, playing with multiple layers of their narration, the cultural currents swirling around them, and personal experience. Among the book’s dual subjects are James Ivory’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, Chantal Akerman’s of Marcel Proust’s The Prisoner, Otto Preminger’s of Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent, Sidney Lumet’s of Mary McCarthy’s The Group, Terence Davies’s of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, and Vijay Anand’s of R.K. Narayan’s The Guide.
Carl Landauer, a visiting scholar with UC Berkeley’s Institute for South Asia Studies and contributing editor for Poetry Flash, taught history at Yale, Stanford, and McGill. His poems have appeared or will appear in the Kenyon Review, New American Writing, Exacting Clam, VerseVille, Poetry Flash, Santa Clara Review, Bangalore Review, Pembroke Magazine, Orange Blossom Review, Caveat Lector, Life and Legends, and the Mary McCarthy Society website, and his writing on cultural history has appeared in Beat Scene, Salmagundi, The American Scholar, and Renaissance Quarterly—as well as a critical analysis of Project 2025 published by Public Seminar.