Raymond McDaniel reads a poem from his collection Saltwater Empire, which recently came under attack for its use of Katrina survivors’ words as “found poetry.” He defended himself here. It’s interesting that despite the huge volume of commentary both essays attracted, on the Poetry Foundation site and elsewhere, this video from his collection (albeit for a different poem than the lengthy one under attack) had been viewed just six times in the 19 months since it was posted on YouTube. It’s almost as if all the people criticizing McDaniel have never made even a cursory effort to familiarize themselves with his work.

As long as I’ve been doing this site, I still haven’t posted quite all the videos from the “Poetry Everywhere” series of animations by students at docUWM, the documentary media center based in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Film Department, produced under the aegis of the Poetry Foundation. As usual with this series, the poet himself is the reader here.

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

For background on Guevara, see the Poetry Foundation site.

Rest in peace, Lucille Clifton.

A piece by Matthea Harvey, delightfully illustrated by Joseph Kraemer for the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Everywhere series.

A poem by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak; the animation here is by Nicholas Lawrence.

Animation by Siobhan McAlpin of a poem by Nick Flynn. Part of the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Everywhere series, but uploaded to Vimeo by the co-producers of the series: docUWM, “a documentary media center based in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Film Department that provides students the opportunity to work on professional productions and learn the art, craft and business of making media.” For poetry fans, this means that higher-quality versions of the Poetry Everywhere videopoem series than those at YouTube are now available for embedding.

Cool watercolor animation by Neil Subel of a poem by the well-known literary blogger, YA author, and poet Lizzie Skurnick, read by the author.

Sad that it’s taken me this long to post something by one of my favorite poets, Lucille Clifton, but I’m not crazy about the animation here, by Jason Walczyk. Like many if not most of the animations sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, in its effort to make the poem accessible it ends up diminishing much of its mystery and power.

The text of the poem is here.

Animation by Chad Edwards of a poem by Robert Creeley.