“Outrider is a flash of lightning in the dark night, aglow with the life force of Anne Waldman. If you want to sneak up on the secret trajectory of U.S. culture, if you want to know the true, deep possibilities for art in our times—this is your poet. Waldman’s blazing, capacious soul is here at work and this portrait captures the restless luminosity of a whole poetry community in action. You can see the streaks of energy streaming across the screen. This is the work we need to witness now to carry us forward and through.”

— Eleni Sikelianos, poet

“Alystyre Julian, having given herself so totally and selflessly, disappearing into the dark to allow the light of all galaxies to illuminate, creates a film on Anne Waldman unlike everything previous—a poem that creates itself. The performances in Outrider allow Bard, Kinetic to bop pixel kernels and dance to the language of the ever-ch-c-change and become the poem of the page off the page—why the words, themselves, are dancing! And there Laurie Anderson and Meredith Monk, the witches, are calling all music, throat, rock, whistle, shriek, moon of it into the Eleni Sikelianos, the No Land of it all, and how Allen Ginsberg is present, as are Bob Dylan and Patti Smith, but no one is Anne.”

— Bob Holman, founder of the Bowery Poetry Club

“Singular and personal vision—visual sentience unlike any film I can recall. Outrider is a shared and sharing voice of so many voices and so many confluences—the galaxy of Anne Waldman, poetry as devotion, and life.”

— Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth

“William Parker often says to me: Music is as close as people can get to magic. When I saw Anne Waldman perform for the first time, I thought: Her words are as close as poetry can get to magic.”

—Cisco Bradley, historian

“Literally breathtaking. Magnificent. Inspiring. It moved me to the edge of tears. I found solace. I found parts of myself that I have lost. I found consolation for them there with Anne Waldman in the film. I found my dream. I found energy to live. Outrider is so precise and so dreamlike at the same time.”

— Safaa Fathy, poet-filmmaker