~ Video Library ~
The Long Street by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Paul May says, “A little super8 movie I shot in college. It’s based on the Ferlinghetti poem The Long Street.” The poem appeared in A Coney Island of the Mind, and may be read via Google Books here.
Bombing of poems, Warsaw 2009
You never know what’s going to turn up on Vimeo. The instigators behind this event were a collective of Chilean poets called Casagrande. They explain,
We chose Warsaw due to its literary tradition and importance during relevant events in the XX century. It is the land of brilliant philosophers, musicians and poets. For the latter we consider it an important moment to claim the role of written word in life and human history. This year the city commemorates the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of WWII and the 65th anniversary of Warsaw Uprising. We recognise the unquestionable and universal importance of these historical experiences, still formative of the inhabitants of Warsaw as well as for the identity of Europeans in general.
According to an article in a Chilean newspaper, the group, which consists of poets Julio Carrasco, José Joaquín Prieto and Cristóbal Bianchi, began its poem-bombing campaigns back in 2001, with an event designed to commemorate the 1973 Chilean coup. The 100,000 leaflets dropped over Warsaw included the works of 40 contemporary Polish poets and 40 contemporary Chilean poets translated into Polish. Carrasco assured the newspaper that they were not littering: based on his experience with previous poem-drops, he said that within five minutes after it was over, not a single poem would remain on the street.
There was also a public, bilingual poetry reading in Warsaw two days in advance of what I am beginning to think of as P-day.
Walking Around by Pablo Neruda
“Perhaps one of Neruda’s more disturbing poems, Walking Around, comes to life through a mosaic of classic silent horror films featuring among others the great John Barrymore,” says Four Seasons Productions. Recitation and translation by Robert Bly.
There are a number of videos for this poem on YouTube, but I find all of them flawed in some way — it’s one of my favorite poems. The approach here is at least original.
Four Seasons are, by the way, mistaken about the date: it was published in 1935 in Residencia en Tierra II, not in 1971 as they claim. The title is in English in the original.
Zombie Haiku
Yes, zombie haiku. There’s even a book, and a website that includes zombie haiku submitted by various contemporary authors. The twisted genius behind all this is Ryan Mecum.
Woman’s Constancy by John Donne
Here’s a film by John Le Brocq called One Night Stand – Perfect End, in which the John Donne poem serves as a (mostly) internal monologue for the protagonist.
Woman’s Constancy
by John DonneNOW thou hast loved me one whole day,
To-morrow when thou leavest, what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were?
Or that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,
So lovers’ contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them unloose?
Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true?
Vain lunatic, against these ‘scapes I could
Dispute, and conquer, if I would;
Which I abstain to do,
For by to-morrow I may think so too.
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Simpsons read “The Raven” (with help from James Earl Jones) in the third episode of the show’s second season (1990), “Treehouse of Horror I.”
The Dead by Billy Collins
Billy Collins reads his poem “The Dead” with animation by Juan Delcan of Spontaneous.
Distance from Loved Ones by James Tate
A simple, down-to-earth performance of the James Tate poem by one Kungpowish.
Advertisement by Wislawa Szymborska
A poem by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak; the animation here is by Nicholas Lawrence.
Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost
A noir-ish interpretation of Frost’s poem by Josh Contor, an undergraduate student at Brigham Young University.
Cartoon Physics, part 1 by Nick Flynn
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.
The Stolen Child by William Butler Yeats
A William Butler Yeats animation that manages not to be cheesy — and done in Second Life, yet! This is by far the most sophisticated and beautiful SL videopoem I’ve seen. The animator, Lainy Voom, adds, “I’ve had requests from people to visit the Sim where this movie was filmed, unfortunately it does not exist in virtual space – the sets were only set up to create this poem, then they were torn down again.” Thanks to Linebreak blog for bringing this to my attention.
One hates to complain about such a technically accomplished production, but I do think the reading could have been a little louder and livelier. Here’s the text of the poem, which is in the public domain.
The Stolen Child by W.B. Yeats
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.
