Poem for the Rooftops Suite (anonymous Iranian)
1. June 16, 2009: “Defenseless People”
2. June 19: “Where is This Place”
3. June 20: “Listen Closely”
4. June 21: “Let Us Not Forget”
Even the poster of these four anonymous compositions puts “poem” in quotation marks, and indeed the subtitled translations exemplify many of the faults of quickly written, emotionally laden political poetry. But these are nonetheless extremely effective videos, of which the foregrounded words form only a part. The true poem here is Allah-o akbar, and the videos — pitch-black except for occasional flashes of light — create a quintessentially Islamic atmosphere of religious aniconism verging into political iconoclasm.
The title of this post is the preferred title of Chas Danner, the Brooklyn-based freelance writer who got them translated into English, added subtitles, and posted the results to YouTube. “Where is This Place” made the front page of the Huffington Post back on June 20th and was widely forwarded as a result, making it one of the most-watched video poems on the web.
Speaking of HuffPo, journalist Shirin Sadeghi posted a great essay there on Monday that should help put these videos in cultural context, Voices of Protest: The Iranian Word.
They are a nation with a keen sense of their rights, and an audacity to speak up for themselves, whether it’s in the streets, on the page or on the web.
They are also a nation that has never had a truly representative government and thus has adapted its discourse to the guile and euphemism which are required to express thoughts — political in nature — which could otherwise tempt misfortune.
Double entendres, metaphors and symbolism are a part of the gift of “gap” (the Persian word for “gab”) so it is no wonder that literature holds such an eminent position in Iranian culture.
For centuries, poetry in particular has been the ultimate form of expression for Iranians: Iranian poetry is a manual for life and thought, a centuries-old avenue for political dissent.
“In its essence, literature is not tied to politics. If literature has any duty, it is a commitment to language and the creation of beauty,” says Esmail Kho’i, Iran’s pre-eminent poet philosopher, “however in certain circumstances, writers and poets become forced to give rise to politics. The reality is that they do not seek politics, it is politics which obliges them.”
The article includes an excerpt from a poem called “The Rooftoppers,” by Iranian-American poet Mahnaz Badihian:
Our home is possessed
At night we turn to our rooftop
From rooftop to rooftop we protest
Asking ferociously: where is the compassionate God
Our voice echoes with the wind, blow dear courageous wind
Our voice grows taller than poplar trees, so together we stand
Up there, our naked souls together invent bravery, in the moonlight
From rooftop to rooftop we go, till the gaze of morning glories calls us
Up there, again we ask ourselves: who measured God on the rooftops
But we know up there the hands of fear are bigger than the eyes of truth
According to Sadeghi, the aniconic tradition lends an additional, potent weapon to the poet’s arsenal:
When all else fails, even silence is a defiant statement in Iranian literature. “The power of silence and the intentional refusal to take pen to paper can be a political act,” Kho’i says.
The article’s conclusion is worth reading in full.
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).
Reticent Sonnet by Anne Carson
Poem by Anne Carson, the fourth of six excerpts on YouTube from her lecture on pronouns in the form of 15 sonnets called Possessive Used as Drink (Me). See “Recipe” for more information on the series and the production.
Wood Worms by David Morley
Poem, installation and explanation by David Morley
Video by University of Warwick, UK
This is one of a serious of videos featuring Morley and his Slow Poetry workshop. A University of Warwick newsletter has more on the poetry trail Morley constructed:
Warwick academic and poet Professor David Morley recently contributed over 80 poems to a “slow art” poetry trail in woodland at Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire. The “slow poems” are written into natural materials to form a woodland trail and will remain there until they naturally fade and disappear.
The slow art trail aims to raise awareness of environmental issues and explore how artists can develop a more sustainable approach to their creative practice. David Morley, Professor of Creative Writing, was inspired by natural features of the estate including an abandoned Christmas tree plantation, the River Strid, and Barden Tower.
His collection includes ankle-high Haikus written into Elm and longer poems written on easels and fabric. The ‘slow poems’ are designed to be contemplated and enjoyed in the natural woodland and landscape of Bolton Abbey.
The project was developed by Chrysalis Arts – an award-winning public art company which works to regenerate communities by creating public artwork that expresses and reinforces local identity and sense of place.
New Word Hawda (New Word Order) by Linton Kwesi Johnson
Poem by Linton Kwesi Johnson, read live at the 16th International Festival of Poetry in Medellin, Columbia in 2006
Nothing by John Cooper Clarke
Poem by John Cooper Clarke
Film by C. Flannery with narration by Robert Bulsara
Another brilliantly simple video poem from Comma Film.
A Julia de Burgos (To Julia de Burgos)
Julia de Burgos‘ poem to her public self (Spanish text here). Leonard Bernstein conducts the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra in a television performance of a work he composed, Songfest, which borrows texts from various American poets. Daisy Newman is the soprano. In a 1986 review of a Deutsche Grammophon recording, Music critic Edward Greenfield wrote,
If I had to choose one work of Bernstein’s for my Desert Island, it would certainly be Songfest, a cycle of 12 American poems which in its sharpness of imagination brings out Bernstein’s finest qualities. Rather like Britten in the Nocturne and the Serenade, he combines musical ingenuity with illuminatingly poetic response to each poem. The result is not just witty and brilliant, as you would expect, but often intensely beautiful and deeply moving, as in the haunting Whitman love poem and the radiant setting for women’s trio of Anne Bradstreet’s poem ”To my dear and loving husband”.
To watch the entire song cycle on YouTube, start here.
I’m not sure which translation they used for the subtitles (perhaps Bernstein’s own?) but a better one, by Jack Agüeros, may be read here.
Ay, Ay, Ay de la Grifa Negra by Julia de Burgos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YADagH8ipY
Poem by Julia de Burgos, translated by Jack Agüeros
I’ve been looking for videos of poems by the great 20th-century Puerto Rican poet and feminist Julia de Burgos in honor of the confinrmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor, so I was happy to run across this installment from the generally wonderful Favorite Poem Project, featuring bilingual public school teacher Glaisma Perez-Silva.
