~ Animation ~
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.
Chopped Off Arm and Crumbs by Hal Sirowitz
American poet Hal Sirowitz is, according to an uncited assertion in the Wikipedia, the best-selling translated poet in Norway, thanks mainly to these and other animations by Sigrid Astrup. I think the Norwegian really adds an interesting dimension to the poems.
Archaeology by Gaia Holmes
Another fine Comma Film video of a poem by Gaia Holmes, this time by Lisa Risbec, with narration by Jo Bryan. There’s a kind of Russian doll effect at work here: a film within a film, and a book within that, and animation enclosed by live action, and letters in envelopes. Archeaology indeed.
Forgetfulness by Billy Collins
This seemed an appropriate video with which to resume my now-and-then posting of the Billy Collins poetry animations, which are justly famous among fans of contemporary vidpo. How had I forgotten about them? (Hat tip to Carolee Sherwood for jogging my memory.)
See a larger, Quicktime version at Billy Collins Action Poetry.
Constellations by Todd Boss
Angella Kassube animates a poem by Todd Boss. The poem can also be found in higher-quality video and text forms at the new site MotionPoems.com (no direct links available due to Flash overkill).
Der Erlkönig (The Erlking) by Goethe
A wonderfully haunting illustration of the Goethe poem by multimedia artist Raymond Salvatore Harmon, whose write-up on the Vimeo page is worth quoting in full:
Goethe’s poem of gothic horror has haunted me most of my life. As a child I found the poem in a collection of books at an estate auction. I read it over and over, fascinated by this idea of the fairy realm as dark and ugly, something sinister that we should fear – not the glamour and sparkle of modern fairy tales. A warning about things that haunt old woods and black forests.
The bits and pieces, techniques and layers used to create this film are many. Dozens of forms of manipulation have been brought together, from animation to live action, from drawings to rotoscoping. This is my homage to Starewicz, Svankmajer, and the Quays – their dark dreams have inspired my nightmares, have given birth to a generation who see the eyes in the forest and know that all that is fairy is not light.
For more on the figure of the Erlking, see the Wikipedia. For a decent translation, see Robert Bly’s version, “The Invisible King.”
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.
Claustrophobia by Gaia Holmes
http://youtu.be/1WadwzbOW2o
Another Gaia Holmes video poem from Comma Film, this one by Charlotte Caetano, with narration by the poet.
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.
Root by Miklós Radnóti
Poem by the 20th-century Jewish Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti. The animation is by Daniel Lagin, “from an illustration by a Hungarian student based on Miklos Radnoti’s poem Root,” according to the information on the video’s YouTube page. This is a deleted scene from a documentary about Radnóti, Neither Memory Nor Magic, directed by Hugo Perez, “the story of a poet who continued to write poetry even as he faced almost certain death, and one poet’s triumph over the inhumanity of his age — a story almost entirely unknown outside of Hungary.”
The original poem, “Wurzel,” is in German (text here).
