~ Nationality: United States ~
Envy of Other People’s Poems by Robert Hass
This is The Sirens Couldn’t Sing, produced and directed by Nicolas Leither. Leither’s notes on Vimeo are fascinating:
Shot at Inglenook Vineyards in the Napa Valley, this film features a Mutoscope, an early motion picture device (1895-1909) with a series of rotating photographs, like a flip book. Mutoscopes quickly became scandalous as developers used them for peep shows (“penny-in-the-slot peep shows”) featuring naked or nearly naked women.
Watching a Mutoscope film is intimate, eerie, and interactive (you have to crank the handle yourself). I found an important metaphor about silence, sexuality, and the oppression of women between the Mutoscope experience in the film and Robert Hass’s enchanting meta-poem, which I had the pleasure of hearing him read at the Studio One Reading Series in Oakland (2010).
Three Poems by Alexzenia Davis
Jesse Russell Brooks edited and directed this film in collaboration with the author, Alexzenia Davis. The poems are “Make Me,” “My Silhouette,” and “A Lady’s Psyche.”
The City Limits by A. R. Ammons
David Huntington‘s “visualization of the poem by A. R. Ammons.”
The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski
A highly imaginative remix of Tom Waits’ reading. This is definitely a case where the video improves on the poem for me. By itself, I find the text didactic and somewhat clichéd. But director Neil Chan, producer Kathryn Kelly and actress Skyler Carlin have taken it to another level.
When I Move by Khary Jackson
I’ve posted a lot of dance + poetry videos and a lot of spoken word videos, but I believe this is the first in which the poet dances as he recites his poem. This was produced by the St. Paul, Minnesota-based organization Poetry Observed, which according to the description on YouTube “is committed to producing high quality videos of performance poetry, filmed off the stage. Our first series features Minnesota spoken word poets and was produced in collaboration with Button Poetry.”
from “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in” by e.e. cummings
http://vimeo.com/39763560
The young South African filmmaker Coenraad Viviers and his assistants had perhaps a bit too much fun with this section of cummings’ poem. (Read the complete poem at the Poetry Foundation website.)
Written in My Dream by William Carlos Williams
This kinetic text poetry animation by Nikolaus Lesnik uses a reading by Allen Ginsberg.
Subway Services by Philip Dacey
A neon animation by Jack Feldstein based on a poem by Philip Dacey.
The Last Days of the Suicide Kid by Charles Bukowski
An award-winning film by Dutch filmmaker and artist RJ (Jetze Roel van Assen).
