~ Nationality: United States ~
Autobiography by Djelloul Marbrook
Video trailers for books are becoming increasingly common, and sometimes, as here, they take the form of videopoetry. This is one of two trailers by Brent Robison for Djelloul Marbrook’s prize-winning collection from Kent State University Press, Far From Algiers.
Marbrook has had a distinguished career in journalism and now authors a blog on literary and cultural affairs.
Cold by Emily Kendal Frey
With the northeastern U.S. just coming out of a heat wave, winter seems a far-off and delicious prospect. This is a poem from the collection The New Planet by Porland, Oregon-based writer Emily Kendal Frey. The video is by Zachary Schomburg, with whom Frey has also done some collaborative writing, according to this interview with her at The Collagist. For this project they also brought in Emily’s sister Elinor Frey, an accomplished cellist, whose music helped create a very wintry ambience indeed.
Television by Todd Alcott
Beth Fulton writes,
The inspiration of this video comes from Todd Alcott’s poem, Television. I own no rights to his reading of the poem and intend only to share my own personal interpretation. Hope you like!
This is to my knowledge the first English-language videopoem to have gone viral. I first saw it last week on Facebook, where it seems to have been posted quite heavily. It’s been played 445,537 times in just three months, making it currently the most popular videopoem on Vimeo, and second only to Juan Delcan’s animation of Billy Collins’ “The Dead” on YouTube, which has amassed 761,494 views — but over the course of three years. So “Television”‘s refrain, “Look at me!” seems to be working.
Todd Alcott is a screenwriter living in Santa Monica, and judging by the comment he left below the video on Vimeo, seems to be a friend or acquaintance of the filmmaker doesn’t know the filmmaker (though he likes the video — see comments).
How to Make a Crab Cake by January Gill O’Neil
Another in our brief series of videopoems that riff on television. January Gill O’Neil makes nice use of TV cooking-show conventions for a poem from her debut collection Underlife. She blogged briefly about the making of the video here.
(Hat tip: Christine Swint in the Moving Poems forum.)
Some Last Questions by W. S. Merwin
Another section from the production Men Think They Are Better Than Grass by the San Francisco-based Deborah Slater Dance Theatre, based on poems by W. S. Merwin. The two featured dancers here are Travis Rowland and Breton Tyner Bryan. The inclusion of sound effects from the TV quiz show Jeopardy is brilliant, I thought.
Last Thursday, Merwin was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate.
Look Through a Complex Eye and See 1000 of Everything by Zachary Schomburg
Layne Braunstein directed, designed and animated this film for Born Magazine, where the original Flash version still lives (along with the text). Thanks to producer Fake Love for uploading it to Vimeo.
Zachary Schomburg’s website appears to be out of commission, but he does have a blog, as well as a Vimeo account — turns out he makes videopoems himself, too. (Look for examples here in the coming weeks.) The poem is from his second book, Scary, No Scary.
“I reason, Earth is short” by Emily Dickinson
Another animation by Francesca Talenti. You can watch dozens, maybe hundreds of Emily Dickinson videos on YouTube and not find anything so free of cliché as this.
I reason, Earth is short—
And Anguish—absolute—
And many hurt,
But, what of that?I reason, we could die—
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?I reason, that in Heaven—
Somehow, it will be even—
Some new Equation, given—
But, what of that?
Listen and Before the Flood by W. S. Merwin
This is one section of a production by the San Francisco-based Deborah Slater Dance Theatre called Men Think They Are Better Than Grass, based on poems by W. S. Merwin. (I’ll post other excerpts in the coming weeks.) Here’s the description from Vimeo:
This section features the entire company followed by a duet featuring Kerry Mehling and Kelly Kemp. The poems are LISTEN read by Arwen Anderson and BEFORE THE FLOOD read by Peter Coyote, both written by W.S. Merwin. The music is by Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi, video by Elaine Buckholtz, lights by Allen Willner, set by Mikiko Uesugi and costumes by Laura Hazlett.
Ballad of the Skeletons by Allen Ginsberg
This is basically a glorified music video from 1997, directed by Gus Van Sant — but with music by Philip Glass and Paul McCartney, and spoken word by none other than Allen Ginsberg. I got a charge out of seeing him dressed as Uncle Sam, though by the end of the video I was beginning to tire of the poet-as-prophet schtick.
Incidentally, Howl, the movie, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, is set for release in September. That should breathe some new life into the Ginsberg cult.
