~ Animation ~
“A word made Flesh…” by Emily Dickinson
A fascinating linguistic deconstruction of the poet’s lines just uploaded to Vimeo yesterday, by one Eliza Fitzhugh, for Dickinson’s 179th birthday. The multiple accents should remind us that now more than ever, with the advent of the web, Dickinson’s poetry belongs to the world. I spend some time yesterday looking up favorite Dickinson poems on popular poem-sharing sites and reading appreciative comments from places like Iran, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan — the traditional Sufi heartland. I had always thought her work would translate well to an audience weaned on Hafiz, Rumi, and Khayyam.
Here’s the text from R. W. Franklin’s variorum edition (the video repeats lines 9-10 for a conclusion):
A Word made Flesh is seldom
And tremblingly partook
Nor then perhaps reported
But have I not mistook
Each one of us has tasted
With ecstasies of stealth
The very food debated
To our specific strength –A Word that breathes distinctly
Has not the power to die
Cohesive as the Spirit
It may expire if He –
“Made Flesh and dwelt among us”
Could condescension be
Like this consent of Language
This loved Philology.
Bibliophobia by Rob Walker
http://vimeo.com/7872488
A father-son collaboration between Rob Walker, a South Australian writer and poet, and his son Ben, who blogged:
Bibliophobia is an animation I did to a poem by my father that recently won the Newcastle Poetry New Media Prize. It’s not often that you get to work on a project like this with your dad, so it was nice for it to be recognised.
Jason Nelson writes in the accompanying publication ‘The Night Road’;
“Rarely does a digital poem arrive so polished and aesthetically compelling. Using rich layering of textural and graphical imagery ‘Bibliophobia’ explores the strange place between ‘ancient’ paper and the contemporary world’s new digital story/poetic environments. Indeed the work itself seems to be directed towards the brief and portable devices, a trailer of ideas for iPhones and email sharing. Initially I was disheartened by the abrupt and all-too-soon end. But isn’t that what’s expected of media, to attract with style and mystery and ideation, then leave before interest wanes.
And like electronic candy I found myself watching this work again and again, wanting more. Perhaps what’s needed is a pause button, so readers can soak in the organic, near ‘steampunk’ visuals and archaic and experimental poetics”
The Country by Billy Collins
Another in the popular series of animated Billy Collins poems produced by JWT-NY. This one’s by Brady Baltezore. Purely as a cartoon, I think it might be the most satisfying of the lot.
For Poetry, this by Tony Curtis
Irish poet Tony Curtis reads his poem about the death of Delmore Schwartz in this animation by Tim Phelan.
Song to Belong by Nathan Jones
An innovative video by the Liverpool-based arts collective Mercy for a poem by their creative director, Nathan Jones.
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.
The Genius of the Crowd by Charles Bukowski
I’m not a big Charles Bukowski fan, but this is a well-done animation and deserves to be included. It was evidently a collaborative effort: Stefano Internullo, Lorenzo Miglietta, Emanuele Roccucci, Enrico Tanno, and Giacomo Tessitore are the names given in the credits, and they are all evidently from a Rome- and London-based design firm called Digital Bathroom. About this film, they say:
The concept was to make the same feeling of dirt, disullusione and inevitability of events in a short film. The pencil was chosen to give an intimate tone in the project.The video was made in a week, from concept to dvd, and the illustrations have this inherent urgency that makes the tract nervous.
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.
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.
