I’m glad of the arrival of the new movie Bright Star, based on the life of poet John Keats. Really, it’s high time Hollywood produced a movie based on the romantic and absolutely fascinating life of this famous poet. Bright Star focuses on Keats’ relationship with his neighbor Fanny Brawne, and the subsequent influence Brawne has had on the subject and nature of his work. Hopefully, the film will spark a fresh wave of interest in Keats, someone whose life hasn’t provided the kind of mainstream biographical interest as his contemporaries, Byron and Shelley.

Bright Star also got me thinking about the many if-not-great then at least ’solid’ biopics that have recently been produced on the lives of poets. Of course, we don’t prescribe to a biographical reading of any author’s work (we are strictly Barthesian in believing that the author is dead), but we whole-heartedly enjoy the singular sensation of watching the real-life, actual persona of a poet — a creator of poetic fictions — become the subject of a fictional portrayal itself. No one can possibly argue that a Hollywood biopic has any relevance in the discipline of academic biography, so the pleasures we experience in watching them are intently and completely based on fictional — i.e., entertainment — value. These poetic biopics are wholly ‘meta’, unapologetically middle-brow, and greatly entertaining, with small trivia takeaways that become of value later in board games and dinner conversation. We love them! And, without further ado, here are our five favorites.

Sylvia (2003)

Starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath, this biopic examines Plath’s years at Oxford, her meeting and eventual marriage with poet Ted Hughes, and her eventual suicide. In the film, Plath’s poems are given a fair share of the spotlight, though much of the movie’s momentum is derived from Plath’s unstable relationship with Hughes. Paltrow gives a decent (albeit constantly teary and at times violently melodramatic) depiction of Plath, and Daniel Craig’s Hughes is a cold, detached foil. While I wish more focus was put on Plath’s luminous, emotive poems than on a Paltrow’s character study of bipolarity, this film provides a decent glimpse into the various ways that domestic disturbance, depression, and hopelessness can channel itself into some of the most hopeful, violently beautiful poems ever written.

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Another vehicle for Gwyneth Paltrow’s impeccable English accent and manorial, patrician delivery, Shapespeare in Love nonetheless deserves a place on this list, not for its liberal use of Shakespeare’s life as fodder for a fictional love story, but because of the ingenious way Shakespearean dialogue finds itself into the fabric of this film’s screenplay. This movie portrays Joseph Fiennes as the Bard himself, and the story centers around Shakespeare’s relationship with Viola de Lesseps, played by Paltrow. Unfortunately, the love story [SPOILER] does not end happily for the couple, but they do turn in some brilliant performances as Romeo and Juliet in the theater production within the film. In a cheeky homage to the Bard’s repetoire, Paltrow’s Viola becomes immortalized at the end of the film as Shakespeare’s celebrated heroine of Twelfth Night.

Total Eclipse (1995)

A cheesy film to end all cheesy films, Total Eclipse is one of our biggest guilty pleasures. Leonardo di Caprio plays, of all people, Arthur Rimbaud, in a film that examines Rimbaud’s unstable and ultimately tragic romance (and mentor relationship) with Paul Verlaine. While I find it hard to imagine di Caprio even reading Rimbaud, much less portraying him in a film, he doesn’t do that bad of a job. He certainly looks the part (at least, they are both thin and young and have blonde hair). Much of the film is spent watching Leo drink absinthe rather than write poems, but I applaud the efforts of Hollywood to shed any light at all on this troubled poet’s life — even if Rimbaud is rolling in his grave as I write this.

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994)

I love Dorothy Parker. I appreciate Jennifer Jason Leigh on a much smaller level. While I don’t detect Parker’s presence anywhere in this performance by Leigh, I do enjoy parts of this movie for other reasons. You might miss some of the infinitely quotable Parkerisms in the film due to Leigh’s overdone slurring (Parker was an alcoholic for much of her life and was known for her raspy, smoker’s voice) the film does a credible job of depicting Parker’s life during the 1920s, starting at the time she wrote for the New Yorker and focusing on Parker’s blossoming from editorial voice to an unforgettable personality and celebrated writer. Alas, like all the movies we mentioned, this one too depicts the small tragedies of heartbreak, and the viewer is not allowed to miss the enormous impact Parker’s broken heart (at the hands of the unfaithful Charles MacArthur) had on the self-destructive habits that would plague her for the entirety of her life.

Tom & Viv (1994)

You cannot make a movie about T. S. Eliot without angering many, many people, and this film is no exception. If you’ll excuse the egregious biographical liberties the screenwriters take with a largely unknown swath of Eliot’s life (much of this plot is embellished and speculated from obscure and, for the most part, undocumented events) it does, however, provide some light entertainment and shed small dots of light on Eliot’s at-times frustratingly unscrutable life. The film follows Eliot’s relationship with Vivienne Haigh-Wood, whom he was married to in 1915. They separated in 1933 but were never divorced, and the film is meant to dramatize Vivienne’s influence on T. S. Eliot’s work.

Honorable Mention: Edge of Love, starring Kiera Knightly and Sienna Miller, based on the life of Dylan Thomas

Looking Forward To: Howl, based on the life of Allen Ginsberg, starring James Franco