BOOK REVIEW:
A poet’s life in the movies by Dana Wilde, BDN StaffPosted May 21, 2011, at 7:32 p.m.
Last modified May 22, 2011, at 12:48 p.m. Print | E-mail | Facebook | Tweet“My Cinema Paradiso: A Movie-Marathon Lifetime Memoir in 3-D Poetry,” by Tom Lyford; Green Bough Publishing, Dover-Foxcroft, 2010; 80 pages, trade paperback, $14.95.
At some point in the making of five chapbooks of poetry over the past half-decade or so, Tom Lyford must have realized that practically every memory he has from his 60-odd years of life in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, has an analog in a movie. So he went back through scores of poems, found his own private Oscar nominees, gave them movie titles, and bound them together into “My Cinema Paradiso.” The result is a collection of Tom Lyford’s Greatest Hits, containing his characteristic down-to-earth, straightforward, often geeky and sometimes ironically wistful humor.
The gist is that everybody is the hero, or anti-hero, of his own film:
It helps to think of life as a movie — in fact:
make life your movie … life imitates art imitates
life, after all, and no matter how relatively boring
or exciting or noir you find your soap opera,
it’s still your basic adventure with the same
old textbook conflicts, crises, climaxes,
and final resolutions --
You can fantasize your own importance (like Luke Skywalker among mobs of Jabba the Hutts), or try to face reality (like Pinocchio: “was I the only donkey boy in that / crowd?”), or be a James Bond of your own marriage (“Diamonds are Forever”), or just observe your mind’s weirder cinematic errantries (“Earth vs. The Flying Saucers”):
We are not alone. They cultivate us
like peas (PODS!); they abduct us
(BODY SNATCHERS!); re-splice our
genes (X-FILES!); … in
some hideous, insidious
Plan-9 (FROM OUTER SPACE!)
Social activism, this is not. But it is definitely grounded in postwar middle-American central-Piscataquis County. If your life sometimes seems like a series of Woody Allen punch lines, you’ll want to pick up “My Cinema Paradiso.” It and Lyford’s other books are available through www.tomlyford.com.
A poet’s life in the movies by Dana Wilde, BDN StaffPosted May 21, 2011, at 7:32 p.m.
Last modified May 22, 2011, at 12:48 p.m. Print | E-mail | Facebook | Tweet“My Cinema Paradiso: A Movie-Marathon Lifetime Memoir in 3-D Poetry,” by Tom Lyford; Green Bough Publishing, Dover-Foxcroft, 2010; 80 pages, trade paperback, $14.95.
At some point in the making of five chapbooks of poetry over the past half-decade or so, Tom Lyford must have realized that practically every memory he has from his 60-odd years of life in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, has an analog in a movie. So he went back through scores of poems, found his own private Oscar nominees, gave them movie titles, and bound them together into “My Cinema Paradiso.” The result is a collection of Tom Lyford’s Greatest Hits, containing his characteristic down-to-earth, straightforward, often geeky and sometimes ironically wistful humor.
The gist is that everybody is the hero, or anti-hero, of his own film:
It helps to think of life as a movie — in fact:
make life your movie … life imitates art imitates
life, after all, and no matter how relatively boring
or exciting or noir you find your soap opera,
it’s still your basic adventure with the same
old textbook conflicts, crises, climaxes,
and final resolutions --
You can fantasize your own importance (like Luke Skywalker among mobs of Jabba the Hutts), or try to face reality (like Pinocchio: “was I the only donkey boy in that / crowd?”), or be a James Bond of your own marriage (“Diamonds are Forever”), or just observe your mind’s weirder cinematic errantries (“Earth vs. The Flying Saucers”):
We are not alone. They cultivate us
like peas (PODS!); they abduct us
(BODY SNATCHERS!); re-splice our
genes (X-FILES!); … in
some hideous, insidious
Plan-9 (FROM OUTER SPACE!)
Social activism, this is not. But it is definitely grounded in postwar middle-American central-Piscataquis County. If your life sometimes seems like a series of Woody Allen punch lines, you’ll want to pick up “My Cinema Paradiso.” It and Lyford’s other books are available through www.tomlyford.com.
MY CINEMA PARADISO (Amazon.com customers' reviews)
Was the author in my back seat?, May 26, 2010
by Keith Lewis-Brown
So I was talking to a friend and they mentioned that this teacher from a little town in Maine had written some poetry/books that were a very good depiction of Americana in the 50's, thru about the 70's. I thought sure, I'll look it up and give it a try. OMG! Was this author sitting in my back seat of the family car while I was growing up? For all of you young upstarts who didn't have the glorious opportunity of growing up in this era...I'm so sorry for you! You HAVE to read this! It will give you an amazing insight into the magic and power that so enlightened some of us, compelled some of us to become the amazing people we had no idea we could become! The sheer joy of some of the simplest pleasures of life, that today's generations are oblivious about, events that have had such profound affect on how we live our lives today.
Tom Lyford has graced us with his words, his insight, his emotion,unselfishly sharing all the wonderful things of "HIS Americana", which so vividly expresses EXACTLY what many of us were privileged to experience. THANK YOU, Tom, I will be re-reading your works, just to keep me smiling at what I have been privy to in my past...
Tom finds a way to remind me of simpler times and always makes me laugh!, June 5, 2010By S. C. Taylor "Blood Brother" (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: My Cinema Paradiso: A Movie-Marathon Lifetime Memoir In 3-D Poetry (Paperback)
Tom Lyford recounts stories from the 1950's following the treasure maps and flashbacks from childhood memories, and his transition through the teen years and into the 1960's and 70's. If you are a baby boomer this poem collection will more than refresh your recollections, it will make you smile over and over again! If you are younger it will take you to a time before the internet, before 24 hour cable and even before TV! This was a time where growing up in a small town in Maine meant using your own creativity to entertain yourself.
Tom, as a 12 year old, often inspired by the latest movie he had seen, and despite all the warnings and danger rides on and fishes from a makeshift raft in the Piscataquis River, becoming Tom Sawyer on the Mississippi; explores a forbidden Indian cave in trepidation of the ghost he was sure to discover; repels down a cliff after seeing Spenser Tracy and Robert Wagner in the movie "The Mountain.". He and his blood-brother friend brazenly sneak under the Chevrolet dealership's open-house canvas to sneak a peek at the fins on the yet to be released '59. Tom finds a way to sneak into the local movie theater and learns about "LIFE 101" the stuff you needed to know and were not going to learn any other way!
If you have not read his work, you need to, you will be addicted and there is much more! I found more at his website at www.tomlyford.com