February 8th, 2010 § Tagged: Video Poems, Wallace Stevens, Josep Porcar, United States, Blocs de Lletres
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http://www.vimeo.com/2160356
Another of Josep Porcar’s videopoems for the Catalan literary site Blocs de Lletres. Stevens’ poem is now in the public domain, so here’s the text:
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
and, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
February 4th, 2010 § Tagged: Video Poems, Jalal ad-Din Rumi, Mark Pariselli, Afghanistan, Iran, Coleman Barks
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This film-student production by Mark Pariselli features a simple yet ingenious solution to the problem of how to depict mystical consciousness. (Also, it includes footage of mating snails — always a plus in my book.) Read the ghazal here.
February 3rd, 2010 § Tagged: Video Poems, Tristan Tzara, Yeju Choi, France, Romania
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http://www.vimeo.com/9080501
A literal illustration of Tristan Tzara’s technique by Yeju Choi. An alternate translation of the 1920 text appears on Red Studio’s page for an online equivalent equivalent of this technique. I love the closing lines:
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are—an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
February 2nd, 2010 § Tagged: Author-made video poems, Michelle Lovegrove Thomson, Michelle Lovegrove Thomson, United States
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http://www.vimeo.com/9115622
A collage of images and voices of women poets that succeeds brilliantly, both as a tribute to the women whose words are borrowed and as an original videopoem. Michelle Lovegrave Thomson is the editor, cinematographer and hand-processor of the Super8mm film.
February 1st, 2010 § Tagged: Musical settings, Video Poems, Franz Wright, Pete Shanel, United States, Ill Lit
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Pete Shanel is the videographer for this track, released as a promo for the CD Readings From Wheeling Motel, a collaboration between Franz Wright and the folk-pop group Ill Lit.
January 27th, 2010 § Tagged: Musical settings, Video Poems, Anne Carson, Joseph Butch Rovan, Katherine Bergeron, Canada
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http://www.vimeo.com/8898777
Expand this to full screen and turn the sound up: this is Hopper Confessions: Room in Brooklyn for cello, interactive electronics and interactive video. The music is by Joseph Butch Rovan, and the video is by Rovan and Katherine Bergeron. The page on Vimeo includes a rather academic disquisition from which I’ll quote only the opening paragraph:
This multimedia work draws its inspiration from “Room in Brooklyn,” a poem by Anne Carson, published in her collection Men in the Off Hours (New York: Knopf, 2000). Carson’s poem is itself polyphonic, exposing two different voices that speak to the condition of passing time: a painting by Edward Hopper (the 1932 canvas “Room in Brooklyn”) and a passage from St. Augustine’s Confessions. Carson measures the nostalgia of Hopper’s Americana with a tiny thread of verse that hangs on Augustine’s temporal philosophy like a second melodic voice over a stolid cantus firmus.
January 26th, 2010 § Tagged: Animation, Sora, Joseph Shopen, Japan
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http://www.vimeo.com/8919211
A simple Flash animation experiment by Joseph Shopen. The translation is from Japanese Haiku, by Peter Beilenson. Sora was a disciple and traveling companion of Matsuo Bashô.
January 25th, 2010 § Tagged: Author-made video poems, Michael Anthony Ricciardi, Michael Anthony Ricciardi, United States
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This is something I haven’t seen before: a videopoem made of almost entirely of old home movies and photos, with just a few additional Creative Commons-licenced images to fill in the gaps. As Michael Ricciardi describes it,
Experimental, narrative short (an eco-prophetic autobiography) reconstructed from my family’s Super 8mm home movies (late 1960’s) and my Dad’s photos (WWII) – this video was/is a jury-selected finalist in the 2009 H2O Film on Water Exhibition (installed at: Great River Arts Center, Bellows Falls, VT, sponsored by Orion Magazine, Water for People, and Cynthia Reeves Gallery).
Thanks to Michael for leaving a comment here and inviting me to visit his YouTube channel.
January 21st, 2010 § Tagged: Animation, Emily Dickinson, Laura O'Brien, United States
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http://www.vimeo.com/8778562
The first two stanzas of Dickinson’s poem as animated by Laura O’Brien and some collaborators (full credits at the end). The complete poem may be read at Poets.org.
Note to regular readers: I’m scaling back from five to four posts a week here (though some weeks I may still publish five posts if I happen to have the material). Locating good poetry videos is becoming a little more difficult now, and I am wary of turning what should be a joy into a chore.
