~ Poetry Foundation ~
Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars) by Muriel Rukeyser
Julia VanArsdale Miller of Manual Cinema directed this affecting film, which includes shadow puppets, live actors, and animation by Lizi Breit. Here are the full credits.
In this startling animation of Muriel Rukeyser’s “Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars),” two lives unfold in split screen, one during the tumultuous world events of 1968, the other 50 years later against a new landscape of uncertainty and ever-present digital technology.
The film was produced by the Poetry Foundation just last year, part of a new focus on poetry videos on their website, which I was excited to discover recently. When I started this website ten years ago, the Poetry Everywhere series of animations produced by the Poetry Foundation (in association with docUWM at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) was one of the major caches of poetry animations on YouTube, and though they were made by university students and therefore not as sophisticated as the series of Billy Collins animations that had been produced by JWTNY a few years earlier, they were plentiful and my standards were low, so they had a lot to do with turning Moving Poems from a short-term gallery into a long-term blog. I’d always hoped that the Poetry Foundation would devote more of its considerable endowment to producing poetry films some day. It looks as if that day might finally be here.
Landays: Pashtun women’s poetry from Afghanistan
Produced by the Poetry Foundation to accompany the June issue of Poetry magazine, which was entirely devoted to the two-line Afghani poems known as landays. Seamus Murphy‘s film includes lots of stunning shots, and displays familiarity with the filmpoem genre in its imaginative conjunctions of text and image. Murphy has been taking still photographs in Afghanistan since 1994, and some of them accompany his fellow journalist Eliza Griswold‘s essay on, and compilation of, landays for the magazine. One thing the film contributes to the issue is the sound of the Pashto originals, which aren’t otherwise included in the online feature.
A story from PBS NewsHour provides additional background about the project:
Gerald Stern: Still Burning
A very well-done documentary portrait from PoetryMattersNow.org, directed, produced and edited by Norbert Lempert. Here’s the description at the Poetry Foundation website:
Produced by Norbert Lempert of REMproductions in association with the Poetry Foundation. Gerald Stern is as much the poet warrior now as when he stunned the poetry world thirty years ago with his book Lucky Life. In that book he first staked out a place for himself and readers that he has continued to make, a place that in his words is “overlooked or ignored or disdained, a place no one else wanted.” This short documentary film, illustrated with materials from Stern’s own archive, features some of Stern’s best known poems. It also includes commentary by poets Ross Gay, Edward Hirsch, Anne Marie Macari, Heather McHugh, and Thomas Lux, each with a unique perspective on Stern as artist and friend.
I thought this would be a good pick for the U.S. Independence Day holiday, especially given the way Stern, Hirsch and Macardi discuss the climate for poetry in the U.S. starting around 2:30 in Part 1. There’s also this from Stern in Part 2, beginning at 2:58:
We remember the famous words: After the Holocaust, after Shoah, there can be no poetry. And the alternative is: After the Shoah, there can be ONLY poetry. “How about no parades, no cannons, no atom bombs? How about no concentration camps, the way the United States runs concentration camps now?” is another way of thinking about it.
I also like Hirsch’s description of Stern in Part 3, starting at 0:38:
He’s really a poet of the egotistical sublime. The I stands in for the natural world, and for the whole world. And he’s experiencing everything himself.
For more on Gerald Stern, and to read samples of his work, see the Poetry Foundation’s page, which includes 32 poems in text form and 12 audio files.
Assault to Abjury by Raymond McDaniel
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.
Let Us Consider by Russell Edson
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.
Doña Josefina Counsels Doña Concepción Before Entering Sears by Maurice Kilwein Guevara
Best bilingual poem ever? Well, maybe not, but the last line is perfect.
For background on Guevara, see the Poetry Foundation site.
won’t you celebrate with me by Lucille Clifton
Rest in peace, Lucille Clifton.
Shiver & You Have Weather by Matthea Harvey
A piece by Matthea Harvey, delightfully illustrated by Joseph Kraemer for the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Everywhere series.
Advertisement by Wislawa Szymborska
A poem by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak; the animation here is by Nicholas Lawrence.
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.
Grand Central, Track 23 by Lizzie Skurnick
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HvwsuaNxuE
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.
Mulberry Fields by Lucille Clifton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UnLStD-pYk
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.
