Bruce Lee MIXED footage 2018

Over at The Rumpus, Dave Landsberger wrote a fascinating feature on Bruce Lee. That is, on his work as a poet and translator. The poems referenced, among others, can be found in Bruce Lee: Artist of Life by John Little.

Let's get to it! Landsberger breaks his feature into three parts: Bruce Lee "The Student", "The Master" and "The Man". We'll look at a sample from each part.

Bruce Lee was an accomplished poet who not only wrote his own work but translated the work of others. He was a man who took poetry so seriously that he even wrote an entire movie script (with the aid of Sterling Silliphant, the screenwriter of the Oscar winning In the Heat of the Night) based off of a poem that he composed. This poem, “The Silent Flute”, was even written into the titular script, set to be delivered as a final monologue for the hero, Cord (originally set to be played by James Coburn, one of Lee’s famous Hollywood students). It concludes:

Now I see that I will never find the light
Unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel,
Consuming myself.

There are lessons upon lessons to be found in the work of Lee’s poetry, lessons that I, as a poet, often find lacking in many, many poets. Poetry often inspires other poetry, but at its best it does not create production out of jealousy or competition, it creates knowledge. One of Bruce Lee’s greatest lessons in his own martial art, Jeet Kune Do, is that of self actualization vs. self-image actualization. The core of this is simple: spend your energy creating yourself, not creating yourself as you wish to be seen. Don’t fake it before you make it. Make it. Too often as poets we are obsessed with our soft-lit profile photos and the ideas that our lives have to be quirky, complicated, and different than “the normals”. We must backpack in some other country! Why? For poetry! I have a gajillion lovers! I am a poet! What’s wrong with a poet who eats at Pizza Hut buffet and likes poetry a lot? What’s wrong with a poet who loves one woman his entire life? What’s wrong with poetry?

[krishnachaitanyakapuganti]

Nice cool wonderful video, that too good quality

[richardchapman]

Excellent editing..👍 and of course them brilliant images of the great legend himself Bruce Lee ♥️...also a nice wee touch to have Brandon at the end...😇 He was truly following in his dad's footsteps...

[collectorbrucelee]

Superbe 👏👏👏Bon week - kend a Toi 😊 🙋 🐉

[ertont]

Fantastic my friend very well put together what was all that about that guy jumping from the stairs it seemed really funny that bit but nice touch there are in Brandon to the end thank you very much my friend ✌

[brucelee]

I want to see more video that has never been scene.