Jesse Russell Brooks edited and directed this film in collaboration with the author, Alexzenia Davis. The poems are “Make Me,” “My Silhouette,” and “A Lady’s Psyche.”
David Huntington‘s “visualization of the poem by A. R. Ammons.”
A highly imaginative remix of Tom Waits’ reading. This is definitely a case where the video improves on the poem for me. By itself, I find the text didactic and somewhat clichéd. But director Neil Chan, producer Kathryn Kelly and actress Skyler Carlin have taken it to another level.
I’ve posted a lot of dance + poetry videos and a lot of spoken word videos, but I believe this is the first in which the poet dances as he recites his poem. This was produced by the St. Paul, Minnesota-based organization Poetry Observed, which according to the description on YouTube “is committed to producing high quality videos of performance poetry, filmed off the stage. Our first series features Minnesota spoken word poets and was produced in collaboration with Button Poetry.”
The young South African filmmaker Coenraad Viviers and his assistants had perhaps a bit too much fun with this section of cummings’ poem. (Read the complete poem at the Poetry Foundation website.)
The translation by Peter Cole may be read at Poetry International Web. The filmmaker, Lotte Marie Allen, notes that this was
shot in nablus, ramallah, hebron, abu dis, qalandia, jericho, west bank. sinai, egypt. animations from arabic dictionary drawings, postcards, posters, roads and rock formations, my own drawings.
