They are "an open, unpredictable experience" due to eschewing extrinsic expectations based on commercial films.
Peterson said, "The viewer's cycles of anticipation and satisfaction derive primarily from the film's intrinsic structure.
"[5] The film-poems are personal as well as private: "Many film poems document intimate moments of the filmmaker's life.
"[6] David E. James and Sarah Neely are two academics who have sought to explore the relationship between poetry and film.
It bespeaks a cultural practice that, in being economically insignificant, remains economically unincorporated, and so retains the possibility of cultural resistance.’ Of Stan Brakhage, David E. James writes ‘The installation of the filmmaker as a poet had, then, both theoretical and practical components.