~ Video Library ~
My Grave by Philip Levine
Written and produced by Patrick Robert Payne and Susan Ada Brown. Jared Parks directs. Oddly, this is the first decent video for a Philip Levine poem that I’ve run across — the first of many, I hope.
Hangman by Maurice Ogden
Classic film poem from 1964, directed by Paul Julian and Les Goodman with animation by Margaret Julian. According to a Wikipedia entry on the poem, it was a co-winner of the Silver Sail award at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1964. A couple of the user reviews at IMDb are worth quoting. Old_tv_guy calls it
An eerie and disturbing little gem from Melrose Studios. Animation is excellent, of a photocollage style you hardly ever see: stark photo images and gaunt, jagged lines. It seems to be taking place in a backwater of infinity, or a nightmare world of pale colors and limitless space.
And tim_gatchell wrote in 2008,
I also saw this short as a child. Probably in about the 5th grade. It left an indelible impression on me and I continue to use this poem as an example for people when groups allow other groups to be ganged up on and have their rights taken away.
Even more remarkable is that while attending college at Cal Poly, I would take summer classes at the local community college to get credits and save money. Took 2nd Semester Freshman lit and guess who my teacher was…yes, Mr. Ogden himself. He is a remarkable man and I have total respect for the man.
He is still teaching I believe in Costa Mesa at the Coast Community College.
I was unable to verify this biographical information about Ogden.
Though a poorer-quality version of the film exists on YouTube, this was uploaded to the Internet Archive by the Academic Film Archive of North America.
Litany by Billy Collins
A three-year-old recites Billy Collins — another reminder that YouTube is still a vast repository of wonderfulness if you can only find it among all the dross. Fortunately, this one has gone viral. The mother says in a comment,
Billy Collins did see this and wrote a letter to my son and I. We feel very honored.
Thank you all for your kind comments. We are working on a few new poems I hope to have up very soon. If there are any suggestions as to poems you think might be good ones for him to memorize, let me know! I will consider them, if he likes them too.
Here’s Collins himself introducing and reading the poem, in a selection from Fora.TV:
drylung by Clayton T. Michaels
This is the video my co-editor Beth Adams and I commissioned at qarrtsiluni in support of the soon-to-be-released winner of our 2010 poetry chapbook contest, Watermark by Clayton T. Michaels. James Brush wrote about why he elected to envideo this poem, and what influenced his choice of imagery, at his blog Coyote Mercury.
Watermark was chosen by the noted nonfiction author and naturalist Ken Lamberton, who was impressed by the “wonderfully controlled surreal and mesmerizing quality” of the poems. The print edition is already available for ordering ahead of the official launch on Monday, August 30, when we’ll also unveil online and podcast versions. We’re also running a series of poems from the other ten finalists at qarrtsiluni between now and then, hoping in part to interest other micropublishers in snatching up some of these terrific manuscripts (would that we could publish and release videopoems for every one of them!).
To the Hand and To a Coming Extinction by W. S. Merwin
The two poems that comprise the closing section of Men Think They Are Better Than Grass, the Deborah Slater Dance Theatre production based on poems by W. S. Merwin. “To the Hand” is read by Ellen Sebastian Chang and “To a Coming Extinction” by Peter Coyote — an excellent, if terrifying, choice of a final poem. This is also the only one of the videos uploaded to Vimeo that gives a good impression of the film playing behind the stage during the production.
Bluebird by Charles Bukowski
This is the first time I’ve ever posted a video that doesn’t include the text of the poem in some way, either as type, as subtitles, or in the soundtrack, but this animation by Monika Umba was simply too gorgeous to ignore. The accompanying information at YouTube includes the text of the poem, but here’s another video that incorporates it in the soundtrack, a trailer for a documentary on the poet by Diego Jose Baud:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dynMZa4a_d4
Baud mentions in a comment that the reading is his. I couldn’t find anything to indicate whether this documentary has in fact been released yet. The trailer was posted to YouTube a year ago.
The Arithmetic of Nurses by Veneta Masson
Liz Dubelman directed and Paca Thomas provided the animation and score for this VidLit-produced piece. (See VidLit’s “Who We Are” page for bios of Dubelman and Thomas.) Vaneta Masson is the author of two books of poetry based in part on her 35 years as a family nurse practitioner in an inner-city neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Here’s a bio. She doesn’t appear to have a website, but in her Amazon profile, she says:
You can read about my clinic years in two books. The first, a collection of poems (come on you skeptics, give poetry a chance!), is ‘Rehab at the Florida Avenue Grill.’ The second, ‘Ninth Street Notebook–Voice of a Nurse in the City’ contains stories, lessons and reflections from the ragged edge of the real world of nursing and health care.
In 2008, I published a new collection of poems, “Clinician’s Guide to the Soul,” modeled on the pocket-size guides to lab values, drug doses, and treatment protocols I used to rely on during my clinic years. These poems about nursing, medicine, illness and life are meant for professional and family caregivers and all who care about the art and science of healing.
Unknown Bird and Calling a Distant Animal by W. S. Merwin
Another two poems from the production Men Think They Are Better Than Grass by the Deborah Slater Dance Theatre, based on poems by W. S. Merwin. “Unknown Bird” is sung and composed by Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi. “Calling a Distant Animal” is read by Brenda Wong Aoki. The two featured dancers are Travis Rowland and Wendy Rein.
