From his time growing up in Culver City, California to his recent blog for The Best American Poetry online, Laurence Goldstein has explored, with both scholarly insight and a filmgoer's appreciation, the developing confluence of American poetry and film. This culminated in the 1995 publication of The American Poet at the Movies: A Critical Study, which Philip French called "a discerning book, combining criticism and social history. It satisfies scholarly standards while appealing to general readers." Goldstein begins with Vachel Lindsay's infatuated gaze (directed toward the starlet Mae Marsh) then maps American poetry in the cinema centry - up through Jorie Graham's treatment of Lolita in "Fission." The co-editor (with Ira Konigsberg) of The Movies: Texts, Receptions, Exposures (1997), Goldstein continues to write and publish about film.