Posts in Category: Videopoems

Levitation by Gerhard Rühm

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Hubert Sielecki made this damn-near perfect videopoem for a piece by Austrian writer, composer, and visual artist Gerhard Rühm.

The Jump by Susan Balboni

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If the author is the same Susan Balboni who is an established voice-over actor for American television (and also a writer), it’s kind of surprising that the reading is by someone else. A fine videopoem nevertheless. Alan Marino says,

A piece I put together for the Lstudio.com Imaginings series produced and directed by Intelligent Life Productions’ Ron Qurashi. Ron presented me with a poem written by Susan Balboni which he wanted me to marry somehow to this Phantom camera 1000 fps footage of a horse clearing a jump. Got the idea of isolating the horse and placing it in a timelapse cloudscape with poetry reading and music by my friend, Kevin Sullivan. Compositing was painstakingly executed by SFX artist Austin Wallender.

Suitcase by Jane Hirshfield

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Animation by John Eickholt for MotionPoems.com (see also their YouTube channel).

Five ( Dramatic Pauses ) by Brendan Bell

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A found-poetry masterpiece comprised entirely of phrases from the NBC Nightly News between July 2008 and February 2009. Brendan Bell credits himself with “imagery, music, and language reconfiguation,” with additional film footage by Lester Bell. He also singles out NBC anchor Brian Williams as a specific source of some of the language. The description on the Vimeo page is worth quoting in full:

We let the television news into the perceived safety of our lives on a daily basis. Even without direct contact, the language of the medium connects with us via background noise, internet blips, and watercooler small-talk. It has a distinct, and often overlooked, authority over the way we think and feel.

The nightly half-hour national news format attempts to condense the state of the world into easily digestible soundbites. My intention is to release these soundbites, inherent powers intact, realign them and force them to interact in unintended ways.

For seven months, I watched NBC Nightly News, recording phrases that piqued my interest. I focused on this single media outlet to give the project a specific voice and began reconfiguring the phrases into what can best be described as collage poems. Poetry, like the news media, uses evocative language to provide insight into the inner workings of the world. However, poetry allows subtleties and subtext to take center stage. The resulting collage poems highlight the ambiguous spaces between language and life, exposing the vagaries of the ostensibly concrete world around us.

The term (Dramatic Pause) implies a brief deviation from an intended script, or a small crack in real time, where things that are normally hidden become visible. It is based on instructions written for news broadcasters on their teleprompters.

Catalan Ballad (Balada Catalana) by Vicente Balaguet

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A splendid little animation, which Laen Sanches has also made available with French subtitles and without any subtitles. (The original is in Spanish, not in Catalan.) Ines Cuesta helped with the illustrations (and provides additional credits at the link).

Doña Josefina Counsels Doña Concepción Before Entering Sears by Maurice Kilwein Guevara

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Best bilingual poem ever? Well, maybe not, but the last line is perfect.

For background on Guevara, see the Poetry Foundation site.

The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey

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Edward Gorey’s macabre alphabet is brought to life by Wayland Bell and a bunch of other people.

Where shall we go? (¿A dónde iremos?) by Nezahualcoyotl

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A class project, according to the Colombian videographer, Felipe Meneses, but this is by the far the best Nezahualcoyotl videopoem I’ve found on the web. The poem is read in the original Nahuat with Spanish subtitles. Here’s a quick and dirty English translation (from the Spanish):

Where can we go
that death does not exist?
But should I live in tears because of that?
Your heart might as well make itself at home;
no one will live forever here.
Even great lords go down to death,
their worldly possessions put to the torch.
Your heart might as well make itself at home;
no one will live forever here.

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

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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.

“Look at her face…” Ghazal by Jalal ad-Din Rumi

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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.