Most poets have pretty strong constitutions. It's pretty heard to shock or discomfit the poetry community, when a lot of what poetry is about is shocking or surprising readers. But the YouTube channel simply known as "poetryanimations" is sure to send a chill up any poet's spine.
This channel is complete with over four hundred videos of what appear to be classic portraits of poets paired with mock-recordings of their voices. The catch is, when you hit play the portraits begin to move as if they themselves were reciting. The result is very cool for poetry buffs, but a bit creepy. Here's an example of Emily Dickinson "reading" I Cannot Live with You:
Doesn't it seem a little like these poets have come back from the dead in these videos? Faces and voices that in the past we could only imagine now appear before us, reading poems that we know intimately. It's probably a little like the feeling our grandparents got when they saw Jack Benny on television for the first time, rather than the radio. A particularly eerie one is seeing and hearing Robert Frost read the nearly ubiquitous "Road Not Taken":
The fantastically-rendered videos are the work of London videographer Jim Clark. He does a great job making one's skin crawl by animating the videos in a way that's very believable. And creepy or not, his work is about the closest we can get to a post-mortem visit from our favorite bards. I leave you today with the poet that has my vote for "Most Likely to Return from the Dead": Edgar Allen Poe. After watching, be sure to head over to YouTube for the rest of the collection!
Showing posts with label YouTube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label YouTube. Show all posts
The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round: Poetry and Transportation
One of the things we try to do here at Paradise Tossed is dispel the notion that poets are somehow behind-the-times. People tend to imagine so-called "great" poets as stodgy old white men in smoking jackets, but that's just not how it works. Many poets are not luddites in the least, and the best way to demonstrate this is by showing how new technologies tend to show up in poetry pretty quickly. Case in point: last week's binary poetry. But another way that poets incorporate technology into their work is by showcasing a particular kind of transportation that didn't exist in the past.
My favorite example belongs to one of the oldest and whitest American poets, Walt Whitman. Though he spent a great deal of time writing about nature [Leaves of Grass, anyone?], he didn't shy away from choosing as a topic one of the most exciting new technologies of his day: the locomotive. In his poem "To a Locomotive in Winter," Whitman captures the zeitgeist by praising the train as a "type of the modern--emblem of motion and power--pulse of the continent". Here's the poem in full to consider.
If Whitman, of all people, can embrace something seemingly at opposition to the natural world, which he so loved, then poets have a powerful example of ways in which new technologies can be incorporated into poetry.
A contemporary example of someone who picks up the ball with this idea is James Grey. Here he is reading his poem "Muses Do Not Ride the Bus" with accompanying conceptual art:
Unlike Whitman's poem, which praises trains nearly unconditionally, Grey's poem takes a much different tack with the bus. He brings up exactly the question we're discussing: Can a banal mode of every day transportation, like the bus or the train, be a source of poetry? What makes this piece so ironic is that while insisting that "the bus is not for muses," the very fact that he's written a poem about the bus proves the opposite. The bus, for Grey at least, has become a muse itself: the source and object of the poem.
Poets don't have to limit themselves to discussing trees and bees and flowers, and they don't. Whenever a new technology comes along, something that changes every day life, you can be sure that a poet somewhere will write about it. Whitman and Grey are two great examples of poets who took modes of transportation and morphed them into the last thing you'd expect a bus or a train to be: a poem.
My favorite example belongs to one of the oldest and whitest American poets, Walt Whitman. Though he spent a great deal of time writing about nature [Leaves of Grass, anyone?], he didn't shy away from choosing as a topic one of the most exciting new technologies of his day: the locomotive. In his poem "To a Locomotive in Winter," Whitman captures the zeitgeist by praising the train as a "type of the modern--emblem of motion and power--pulse of the continent". Here's the poem in full to consider.
If Whitman, of all people, can embrace something seemingly at opposition to the natural world, which he so loved, then poets have a powerful example of ways in which new technologies can be incorporated into poetry.
A contemporary example of someone who picks up the ball with this idea is James Grey. Here he is reading his poem "Muses Do Not Ride the Bus" with accompanying conceptual art:
Unlike Whitman's poem, which praises trains nearly unconditionally, Grey's poem takes a much different tack with the bus. He brings up exactly the question we're discussing: Can a banal mode of every day transportation, like the bus or the train, be a source of poetry? What makes this piece so ironic is that while insisting that "the bus is not for muses," the very fact that he's written a poem about the bus proves the opposite. The bus, for Grey at least, has become a muse itself: the source and object of the poem.
Poets don't have to limit themselves to discussing trees and bees and flowers, and they don't. Whenever a new technology comes along, something that changes every day life, you can be sure that a poet somewhere will write about it. Whitman and Grey are two great examples of poets who took modes of transportation and morphed them into the last thing you'd expect a bus or a train to be: a poem.
Review: Classic Poetry Aloud Podcast
Contributing writer Travis King is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist from Oregon. He has a long-standing love/hate relationship with technology but is excited about exploring the opportunities the Internet presents in the field of poetry.
In my last post, I wrote about SpokenVerse, a poetry channel on YouTube, and I mentioned at the end the convenience afforded by such a medium for those who enjoy listening to poetry on-the-go. In this post, I’d like to introduce you to something similar: the poetry podcast. There are a number of these available on the web and through directories such as Apple’s iTunes Store. One of my favorites, which I discovered soon after purchasing my first iPod, is Classic Poetry Aloud.
The anonymous podcaster of Classic Poetry Aloud describes it as a podcast “giving voice to the poetry of the past.” Since May 2007, he has uploaded nearly 500 readings—an average of one every 1.5 days. Although the gentleman who reads the poems is English, all are old enough to be in the public domain in the United States, which means that none were composed more recently than World War I or shortly thereafter, making them true classics. The poems include many English classics, including pieces by Romantic poets such as Keats, Byron, and Shelley, as well as later poets such as Tennyson and Kipling. Older poets, including Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Donne, are also showcased. There are also well known American poets, including Poe, Dickinson, and Whitman, as well as lesser known poets from both Britain and the United States.
Recent episodes, as well as all the past ones from the Classic Poetry Aloud podcast can be found at http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com, while iTunes carries the 100 most recent episodes. The anonymous podcaster can also be followed on Twitter.
I’m a fan of classic poetry, so I’ve chosen this one to exemplify poetry podcasts, but there is, of course, a wide variety of others. An iTunes search results in hundreds of entries. Many, like Classic Poetry Aloud collect older poems, because they are copyright-free and thus require no royalty fees to be paid, but others showcase modern poets and poetry through interviews and performances. From erotic poetry to political poetry to poetry slams and more, there are podcasts available on the web for nearly every taste.
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Join Travis on the Web at http://grailseeker.wordpress.com/
Follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/travisking
Download samples of his work at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/travisking
In my last post, I wrote about SpokenVerse, a poetry channel on YouTube, and I mentioned at the end the convenience afforded by such a medium for those who enjoy listening to poetry on-the-go. In this post, I’d like to introduce you to something similar: the poetry podcast. There are a number of these available on the web and through directories such as Apple’s iTunes Store. One of my favorites, which I discovered soon after purchasing my first iPod, is Classic Poetry Aloud.
The anonymous podcaster of Classic Poetry Aloud describes it as a podcast “giving voice to the poetry of the past.” Since May 2007, he has uploaded nearly 500 readings—an average of one every 1.5 days. Although the gentleman who reads the poems is English, all are old enough to be in the public domain in the United States, which means that none were composed more recently than World War I or shortly thereafter, making them true classics. The poems include many English classics, including pieces by Romantic poets such as Keats, Byron, and Shelley, as well as later poets such as Tennyson and Kipling. Older poets, including Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Donne, are also showcased. There are also well known American poets, including Poe, Dickinson, and Whitman, as well as lesser known poets from both Britain and the United States.
Recent episodes, as well as all the past ones from the Classic Poetry Aloud podcast can be found at http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com, while iTunes carries the 100 most recent episodes. The anonymous podcaster can also be followed on Twitter.
I’m a fan of classic poetry, so I’ve chosen this one to exemplify poetry podcasts, but there is, of course, a wide variety of others. An iTunes search results in hundreds of entries. Many, like Classic Poetry Aloud collect older poems, because they are copyright-free and thus require no royalty fees to be paid, but others showcase modern poets and poetry through interviews and performances. From erotic poetry to political poetry to poetry slams and more, there are podcasts available on the web for nearly every taste.
--
Join Travis on the Web at http://grailseeker.wordpress.com/
Follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/travisking
Download samples of his work at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/travisking
YouTube Censors Poetry Reader
Contributing writer Travis King is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist from Oregon. He has a long-standing love/hate relationship with technology but is excited about exploring the opportunities the Internet presents in the field of poetry.
I was recently directed to an interesting article in the Chicago Sun-Times regarding a YouTube channel called SpokenVerse. SpokenVerse is an amazing channel. Created on August 8, 2008, it consists at this point of nearly 500 videos, each a reading of an English-language poem by the anonymous user known only as Tom O’Bedlam, a name itself derived from an anonymous poem of the early 17th century. O’Bedlam’s voice is well suited to reading poetry, and he makes each piece stand out as art. What’s more, he makes it an enjoyable multimedia experience; each reading is accompanied by a text version of the poem as well as visual art that ties in with the poem’s theme.
The Sun-Times article linked to above focuses primarily on the controversy surrounding one of these photographs. A few months ago, on March 13, O’Bedlam uploaded his reading of “The Cinnamon Peeler,” a beautiful and erotic piece by Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient. Although currently a resident of Canada, Ondaatje hails originally from Sri Lanka, and at the end of the video, after the reading and presentation of the text, viewers were presented with a century-old black-and-white photograph of a Sri Lankan woman with one breast bared. As stated in the article, this photograph was determined by some of YouTube’s users and employees to violate their guidelines, which prohibit nudity except in an “educational, documentary and scientific” context, and so it was removed. Numerous protests were lodged, and eventually the photograph was reviewed in more detail. One can only assume its artistic merits were recognized, because the decision was reversed, and the video was reinstated. I present it here for your own consideration:
Unfortunately, reinstatement seemed to come too late. Mr. O’Bedlam, apparently offended by the censorship of an artistic photo that reflected the erotic nature of the spoken and textual art it accompanied, posted a statement to his channel that he would be uploading no more videos. He recently changed his mind, and after a two-month hiatus, he has returned to YouTube, uploading another twenty poems in the past week. Based on the comments of regular subscribers, it’s obvious that they’re pleased by this decision, although they supported him in his original decision, as well. I too am pleased. Having just found this channel, I look forward not only to listening to those pieces already posted but also seeing it continue to grow.
In this day and age, many of us are often on-the-go, with increasingly less time just to sit back and enjoy reading poetry. Listening to poetry while working or commuting is a simpler and—when the voice of the presenter is as entrancing as Tom O’Bedlam’s—perhaps more enjoyable way of experiencing it. For those of you with YouTube access on a portable device, such as an iPhone, access to this art is only a few finger movements away, almost anywhere your life takes you. Although the controversy over the Sri Lankan photograph shows that there is still room for debate over what is pornography and what is art—and just whom, in this digital age, shall decide the difference—nevertheless, there can be no debate that the Internet makes such art more easily accessible and allows for its presentation in a number of different ways. I, for one, look forward to discovering what more YouTube and the rest of the Internet have to offer in the way of presenting poetry in a fashion that takes advantage of its multimedia capabilities.
I leave you with another poem from SpokenVerse, Ovid's "Corrinae Concubitus," as translated by Christopher Marlowe. Strangely, though it too contains erotic imagery, in the form of paintings, it was not removed from YouTube.
I was recently directed to an interesting article in the Chicago Sun-Times regarding a YouTube channel called SpokenVerse. SpokenVerse is an amazing channel. Created on August 8, 2008, it consists at this point of nearly 500 videos, each a reading of an English-language poem by the anonymous user known only as Tom O’Bedlam, a name itself derived from an anonymous poem of the early 17th century. O’Bedlam’s voice is well suited to reading poetry, and he makes each piece stand out as art. What’s more, he makes it an enjoyable multimedia experience; each reading is accompanied by a text version of the poem as well as visual art that ties in with the poem’s theme.
The Sun-Times article linked to above focuses primarily on the controversy surrounding one of these photographs. A few months ago, on March 13, O’Bedlam uploaded his reading of “The Cinnamon Peeler,” a beautiful and erotic piece by Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient. Although currently a resident of Canada, Ondaatje hails originally from Sri Lanka, and at the end of the video, after the reading and presentation of the text, viewers were presented with a century-old black-and-white photograph of a Sri Lankan woman with one breast bared. As stated in the article, this photograph was determined by some of YouTube’s users and employees to violate their guidelines, which prohibit nudity except in an “educational, documentary and scientific” context, and so it was removed. Numerous protests were lodged, and eventually the photograph was reviewed in more detail. One can only assume its artistic merits were recognized, because the decision was reversed, and the video was reinstated. I present it here for your own consideration:
Unfortunately, reinstatement seemed to come too late. Mr. O’Bedlam, apparently offended by the censorship of an artistic photo that reflected the erotic nature of the spoken and textual art it accompanied, posted a statement to his channel that he would be uploading no more videos. He recently changed his mind, and after a two-month hiatus, he has returned to YouTube, uploading another twenty poems in the past week. Based on the comments of regular subscribers, it’s obvious that they’re pleased by this decision, although they supported him in his original decision, as well. I too am pleased. Having just found this channel, I look forward not only to listening to those pieces already posted but also seeing it continue to grow.
In this day and age, many of us are often on-the-go, with increasingly less time just to sit back and enjoy reading poetry. Listening to poetry while working or commuting is a simpler and—when the voice of the presenter is as entrancing as Tom O’Bedlam’s—perhaps more enjoyable way of experiencing it. For those of you with YouTube access on a portable device, such as an iPhone, access to this art is only a few finger movements away, almost anywhere your life takes you. Although the controversy over the Sri Lankan photograph shows that there is still room for debate over what is pornography and what is art—and just whom, in this digital age, shall decide the difference—nevertheless, there can be no debate that the Internet makes such art more easily accessible and allows for its presentation in a number of different ways. I, for one, look forward to discovering what more YouTube and the rest of the Internet have to offer in the way of presenting poetry in a fashion that takes advantage of its multimedia capabilities.
I leave you with another poem from SpokenVerse, Ovid's "Corrinae Concubitus," as translated by Christopher Marlowe. Strangely, though it too contains erotic imagery, in the form of paintings, it was not removed from YouTube.
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