tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66807020031212163012024-03-05T21:28:14.324-08:00irreducible: a study on the concept and genre of poetry filmLaura Theobaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14717166881197210901noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6680702003121216301.post-19734372842364751322014-07-13T15:16:00.000-07:002019-01-16T16:33:08.545-08:00The Blog Tour<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Today I’m going to do something different
and talk about myself. I’ve been asked to take part in a kind of blog-chain
blog-attack called, apparently, "The Blog Tour” and answer the following
questions and, given that some time has passed since my last post, I’m
happy to do so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Thanks, <a href="http://kangmink.tumblr.com/post/90605650727/my-writing-process">Min Kang</a> and <a href="http://afteriwasdead.blogspot.com/2014/07/what-are-you-working-on.html">Laura
Mullen</a>, for being the immediate predecessors to this occasion. I’m not sure
who started the Tour, but I hope readers will dig into at least these women’s
work (both have poetry-films available for viewing online) and the work of the
two amazing poets I've tagged to respond next: <a href="http://newprivacy.tumblr.com/">Emily Kendal Frey</a> and <a href="http://themadscene.tumblr.com/">Derrick Austin</a>. I’ll post their bios with
links again at the end.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">***</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><i>1. What are you working on?</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I’m working on "rejuvenation," to
use a word that makes me think of body wash, which requires a lot of “down
time.” I just finished my first manuscript as well a trialing first year in
grad school, during which, among other demands, I was shoved to the front of
the class and instructed to instruct. Interesting. My feeling has always been
that teaching comes from a place of wanting to teach and having things to say. But
anywho. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Since finishing the manuscript, I’ve
had a hard time finishing the manuscript. I’ve been stuck in a loop writing
poems that belong in the manuscript, but I’ve had some success working my way
out of it, with the help, I should say, of Claudia Rankine’s book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Don’t Let Me Be Lonely </i>and its diary-meets-journalistic
approach to confession, its little digestible squares of revelation, and horror, and filament. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My ms <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</span> finished and I’m looking for a publisher. Message me if interested.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I’m sort of cooking up a poetry-film
in my brain—maybe a longer one this time, that combines film essay with
poetry-film, and documents the bizarre, constructed world of the MFA, or maybe
just college, and personal life, and “creativity.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I’m working on being a person, though, and not anything much else at the moment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>2. How does your work differ from others’
work in the same genre?</b></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">How does a Magnolia leaf differ
from the shadow of a house? Or a clover from an earthworm? I am thinking of the
genre of poetry as my backyard and of me as the backboard for horseshoe left by
previous tenants. But that’s because I’m me. Imaginary things can also exist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My friend said recently that there’s an economy of language, but I think, “but I’m a poet.” Another says “humor,” but I think heartbreak. Someone says “directness of speech” and I’m like, “Yeah.” It’s pretty hard to be objective about these things. I’m coming from a very liberal, pretty feminist place. </span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>3. Why do you write what you do?<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I get stuck in a loop. A line
from one of my poems is “i think a thing about rivers / and i forget like how
to walk into a field.” I get stuck on a thing. Sometimes for years. Mostly the
thing is love, romantic love—very seldom am I not talking about love. But I am thinking
of breaking out of that loop (if possible). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>4. How does your writing process work? <o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sometimes, like with the film-essay/poetry-film
I mentioned above, there are ideas that take shape and start to solidify in my
brain. These are harder to execute. Sometimes they don’t get made. A lot of
times they don’t get made, because they feel made before they are made. Like “What’s
the point of making this? I’ve already seen it now in my brain.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It’s better when a thing comes up
sudden like. (Like puking?). My first chapbook <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eraser poems</i> (forthcoming, H_NGM_N Books) happened that way. My
second chap (unpublished) was unexpected. The ms happened pretty sudden (for a
book length work). But all this is after a decade or so of trying to figure out
what kind of writer I am and trying things. I’m still trying of course.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Having “success” come this way kind
of reinforces the idea, for me, that art shouldn’t feel too much like work,
which maybe reinforces my “laziness” to some extent. I don’t do heavy editing;
I don’t write every single day; I don’t have a routine. I’m ok with giving
myself “time off.” I trust that my instinct is to write, and make art, and be
engaged, and that you don’t lose your instincts. If something “doesn’t feel
right” or “isn’t working,” I usually lay off and trust that if it’s important
enough it’ll come up again later ("come up" again, heh). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Writing seems sometimes a lot
like faith, which is weird because I’m not really big on faith in general. It’s
like that Skittles commercial where the kids are sitting on a rainbow and one
kid is like “How are we doing this?” then falls through the rainbow. I think
it’s like that. The creative process is not, in my experience, quite as nice as
chilling on a rainbow, but it is probably about as unusual and isolated, and
you have to be okay with a certain amount of mystery being involved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">***</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">See what these
amazing poets have to say about their process during the upcoming weeks:</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://themadscene.tumblr.com/" style="text-align: justify;">DerrickAustin</a><span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; color: #3e454c; text-align: justify;"> is a Cave Canem fellow. He earned his MFA from the University of
Michigan. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Image: A Journal of Arts
and Religion, New England Review, Crab Orchard Review, Memorious, Unsplendid,
and other journals.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; color: #3e454c; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background: rgb(247 , 247 , 247); color: #3e454c;"><a href="http://newprivacy.tumblr.com/">Emily
Kendal Frey</a> lives in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of several
chapbooks and chapbook collaborations, including FRANCES, AIRPORT, BAGUETTE,
and THE NEW PLANET. THE GRIEF PERFORMANCE, her first full-length collection,
won the Norma Farber First Book Award from The Poetry Society of America in
2012. Her second collection, SORROW ARROW, is available now from Octopus Books.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Laura Theobaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14717166881197210901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6680702003121216301.post-67426316478779031082014-03-22T22:30:00.001-07:002019-01-16T16:25:53.207-08:00on manifestos and the critical need<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMSWd8D3hzEPBjUrfOCocsNL25tm4EUDKvntA76GlQ4ZMrX90njuXnL81DJ9r4Nrses8qeJsS3RTfbFW9olh6OjgVZPnv8JsStipQb7fSiwLW_-cw7Rl2U8TnKqFG_fUOxPfUBVW7nLWE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-10+at+3.44.06+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMSWd8D3hzEPBjUrfOCocsNL25tm4EUDKvntA76GlQ4ZMrX90njuXnL81DJ9r4Nrses8qeJsS3RTfbFW9olh6OjgVZPnv8JsStipQb7fSiwLW_-cw7Rl2U8TnKqFG_fUOxPfUBVW7nLWE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-10+at+3.44.06+AM.png" width="246" /></a></div>
It should be noted that <a href="http://movingpoems.com/">Moving Poems</a>, a site devoted to the pursuit of poetry-film since 2009, or more specifically Dave Bonta, the curator of the site, has accumulated a considerably sizeable (given the relative “newness” of the subject) collection of articles, essays, and manifestos, etc. on the topic of poetry-film—which, as he points out, might otherwise be known as “cinepoetry” or “videopoetry.” (See the <a href="http://movingpoems.com/videofilmpoetry-links/">links</a> section there.) At the time of Moving Poems’ conception, <a href="http://www.ubuweb.com/">UBU Web</a> had, of course, already been doing its thing of cataloguing every artistic performance and bit of digital ephemera it could get its hands on since 1996, but a number of other poetry-film sites were much more recent: <a href="https://vimeo.com/album/21036">Rabbit Light Movies</a>, spearheaded by Joshua Marie Wilkinson (which evolved into <a href="http://thevolta.org/medium-mainpage.html">The Volta: Medium</a> in 2011), had been soliciting and making its own poetry films since 2007; and <a href="http://www.motionpoems.com/">Motion Poems</a> (2008) had just begun; while <a href="http://www.filmpoem.com/">Film Poem</a>, a poetry-film festival and hosting site headed by Alastair Cook, began in the same year (2008); <a href="http://www.shortoftheweek.com/">Short of the Week</a>, a site devoted more broadly to video “stories,” was still in its earliest stages (2007).<br />
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Two related documents that appear in the immensely instructive
“About” page on Moving Poems, and that seem to be referred to commonly by a
number of the proponents of the poetry-film “movement” that I have listed above
are Alastair Cook’s self-described “manifesto” <a href="https://alumpinthethroat.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/the-filming-of-poetry/">“The Filming of Poetry”</a> and Tom
Konyves’ <a href="http://issuu.com/tomkonyves/docs/manifesto_pdf">"Manifesto,"</a> (2011).
Konyves is a poet/video-poet currently teaching at the University of Fraser
Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia, and purportedly one of the first to
work in the genre of poetry-film He is also <a href="http://www.litlive.ca/tom-konyves-visual-text">credited</a> with coining
the term “videopoetry” in 1982 to refer to his own work. (Although, as P. Adams
Sitney points out in his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eyes Upside
Down</i>, artists like Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, and Marie Menken, among
others, (some of whom I’ve tried to talk about on this blog) were approaching
ideas about poetry and film much earlier. For instance, Mekas is quoted in the
‘60s by Sitney as saying of Menken that her work is among “the very best of our
contemporary poetic cinema.”) However, since these two documents seem to serve
as placeholders and items of reference for a number of internet-based poetry-film
sites and festivals, I think they certainly merit a close reading here. <br />
<br />
Konyves begins his Manifesto, intriguingly, by stating the presence of a
distinction between terms that I might think of as interchangeable—some of these
are “poetry film,” “film poetry,” “poemvideos,” and “poetry videos” (notice my most frequently used term “poetry-film,” with the hyphen, does not appear among these)—though, to my understanding, he
does not provide grounds for this distinction in the manifesto, nor does he
allude to a previous text which might illuminate his meaning. He defines “videopoetry” in relation
to my own two unique “categories” of the genre (which I described in my <a href="http://theirreducible.blogspot.com/2014/02/lost-book-found-1996-jem-cohen-this.html">secondpost</a> on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Laux d’Artifice</i> as
existing as two types: (1) those that may not possess textual elements (a poem,
per se) but which nonetheless elicit a “poetic response” and (2) those in which
the subject of the films seems to be a poem) as encompassing the latter type,
by excluding any works that do not supply a text, audible or otherwise, from
his definition of the term. Konyves also suggests that the juxtapositions of
sound, to text, to image, should remain, as a rule, indirect—that a direct
correlation/relationship between these would cause the film to fall into some other
category and diminish the poetic quality of the work; he describes the effect
of such an indirect relationship, much as I have in my former category, as a
“poetic experience,” but does not permit that these types of films should be
called “videopoems.” </div>
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Konyves also presents the useful
term of “poetry haiku,” which he defines as a poetry-film of 30 seconds or less,
presented in contrast with the “videopoem”—which, he says, should theoretically
not extend past 300 seconds (5 minutes)—and outlines a precise five categories
of videopoem, which are potentially overlapping and which are described in the
following way:</div>
<div class="MsoListBulletCxSpFirst">
<ul>
<li>kinetic text: the animation of text over a neutral background (something
perhaps like <a href="http://poemflow.com/">this “poemflow” by Bruce Covey</a>
or possibly the work of <a href="http://theirreducible.blogspot.com/2014_03_01_archive.html">Young-HaeChang Heavy Industries</a>);</li>
<li>sound text: which “presents the text on a
soundtrack” (or in which, it seems, the “text” is presented audibly, rather
than visually, like in <a href="http://theirreducible.blogspot.com/2014/03/eventually-you-will-be-dead-but-today.html">Steve
Roggenbuck’s films)</a>;</li>
<li>visual text: in which text is superimposed over
found or recorded images (<a href="http://theirreducible.blogspot.com/2014/03/eventually-you-will-be-dead-but-today.html">Kate
Greenstreet</a>);</li>
<li>performance: the on-screen appearance of the
poet, reading the poem (like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpimsgfNj7c">this</a>); and</li>
<li>cin(e)poetry:
like the “visual text,” category, except that the visual elements appear to be computer-generated
(like the films featured on <a href="http://www.motionpoems.com/">Motion Poems</a>).</li>
</ul>
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Alastair Cook, as I said, is the founder of Film
Poem, based out of Edinburg, Scotland, where he works, according to the bio
provided in his “Manifesto,” predominantly with lens-based media. In his text,
Cook quotes William Wees, Professor at McGill University in Montreal and author
of a number of books on film, as providing a foundational text on the
genre—which he refers to as “poetry-film” (with the hyphen)—with his 1984 essay
“The Poetry Film.” Like Konyves, he provides some eloquent prose articulating
the “poetic response” or experience of the poetry-film through Wees, who says
that it is the juxtaposition of film and text that expands upon the specific
denotations of words to provide new meanings and “directs our responses towards
some concretely communicable experience.” Rather than focusing on providing
functional set of parameters for the genre, Cook seems more concerned with
describing the merits of creating such works, though he does provide a series
of categories:</div>
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<ul>
<li>the use of graphic text of a poem, in part or in
whole, without any visual movement or film; the literal filming of a text</li>
<li>the simple use of the graphic text of the poem,
in part or whole, under-laid with visual movement, either animation o[r]
natural filmic elements; a visual film of text and audio</li>
<li>performance</li>
<li>the unabridged reading of a poem by the poet, or
another, over a film that attempts to combine the poem with visual and audio
elements</li>
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While the last two categories unquestionably correlate with the last two of Konyves’, it is unclear whether his first category would encompass works that Konyves calls “kinetic,” since the idea of no visual movement in film is in itself somewhat problematic. Additionally, while Cook, in the course of his essay stresses the importance of the poem’s vocal presence, reminding one of the historic oral tradition of poetry, he does not seem, as Konyves does, to allow for a category that describes the presence of sound and visual elements without a visual representation.<br />
<br />
Cook permits one other rather egregious assumption in his essay, namely that the poet and the filmmaker are not one and the same. While the ideas here may serve to address the artistic aims of his site (it seems it is likely his purpose), they do not do much to inform genre as a whole, which is comprised, I would dare to guess, mostly of poets who are also the authors of their films. At the same time, Cook is modest about his claims and points to other figures who are more outspoken about the genre, like Ron Silliman, whom Cook quotes as saying in regards to Billy Collins’ poetry-film <i>The Dead</i> that it is “neither poem nor cartoon threatening enough to break any new ground”—a sentiment the full weight of which seems to be a little lost on Cook.<br />
<br />
Indeed <a href="http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Silliman’s blog</a> (which Konyves also refers to in his Manifesto) seems to be a fine resource in regards to films that fall into the realm of the “poetic” (Chris Marker and Samuel Beckett are among these), poetry-related biopics, and some rather pleasantly severe opinions on these and other mediums. <a href="http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search?q=%22neither+poem+nor+cartoon+threatening+to+break+any+new+ground++whatsoever%22">This post</a>, from which Cook and Konyves derive their perspective quotes, identifies Konyves’ desire to create a formal set of parameters for the genre in question, and the impediment to this task as its simply overwhelming number of participants. With all these participants (and the number of sites devoted to them), one might think that there would be no shortage of critical analysis of the form. And, yet, here we are.<br />
<br />
While Silliman’s criticisms of the works of poetry super-giants like Billy Collins and others are refreshing and entertaining, and while he does seem to acknowledge the legitimacy of a pursuit for the distinction of form, his assessment of the genre of poetry-film is somewhat lacking. For example, he cites Nico Vassilakis as being, for him, a pioneer in the genre, despite the fact that the (admittedly few) films of Vassilakis’ I watched on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=nico+vassilakis&aq=f">Youtube</a> present no text at all—neither visual nor spoken. I suppose that since Silliman provides no specific example, we can’t be certain of his opinion of the merits of Vassilakis’ films as models of the genre. Many of them seem to resemble works like Brahkage’s more than any of the films I’ve discussed on my own blog; others seem less notable. Despite his own preference Silliman describes a need for the genre’s “Baudelaire” as he puts it—a poet to embody the form. I would argue that at this point (this post was authored in 2009) we have several—some of whom I have tried to acknowledge in my earlier posts. What we lack is that ongoing, up-to-date, analytical stance (with Konyves as an exception), which seeks to determine the parameters in an effort to uphold the form as a legitimate and distinctive pursuit.<br />
<br />
As a bonus, here's a videopoem that serves the dual-purpose of serving as a trailer of my own poet-professor Lara Glenum's <i>Maximum Gaga</i>. "Is it absolutely necessary to make such abominations? It is absolutely necessary to make such abominations."<br />
<br />
[Edit: This video has since been removed by the author. If you know of a copy, please mention it in the comments. Thank you.]</div>
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Laura Theobaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14717166881197210901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6680702003121216301.post-32889537050113731062014-03-07T02:50:00.001-08:002019-01-16T16:32:04.745-08:00DAKOTA, I lived among girls<h3>
<a href="http://www.yhchang.com/DAKOTA.html"></a></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.yhchang.com/DAKOTA_V.html" target="_blank">DAKOTA</a> <br />Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">This week’s post is brought to you firstly by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, a Seoul-based producer
of a substantial collection of text-based poetry-films translated into a number
of languages, comprised of the duo Young-Hae Chang and Marc Voge (and brought
to my attention by the lovely Lara Glenum). And I am so excited by this discovery. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The films on <a href="http://www.yhchang.com/" target="_blank">their site</a> consist of the same basic
elements: black and white Flash-animated text and music. The animation is not terribly
advanced or extreme (the letters are not, for example, dancing off the page, or
morphing into landscapes), the tall, bold, sans-serif (Monaco font) words
simply appear and transition in time with the music—for the most part. In some
of the films, the words might flash to grey, black, or white, or the text might
appear in red or other colors, or inside of a box outline, but typically the
principals <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>remain the same: technically
nothing terribly advanced appears to be happening in these films; they don’t appear
to require a great deal of skill. And yet, they are undeniably dynamic,
gripping—their overall aesthetic is completely identifiable; however easily a
similar video might be produced, it would unavoidably bear the trademark of
YHCHI. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Chang and Voge are of course aware of the relative technical
straightforwardness of their achievement, as pointed out in the conversational
video “<a href="http://www.yhchang.com/BROWN_WORKSHOP.html" target="_blank">FIRST WORKSHOP EVER</a>”
(apparently an instructional video intended specifically for a class of students
at Brown in 2008) they seem to challenge the perception that art must be “difficult”
or labor-intensive, and stress the point that art (its process, the making of
art) should be enjoyed. One might be tempted, as I am, to recall the fact that
poetry primarily exists today in, technically, one of the most straightforward
formats imaginable: ink on paper. Their work seems to hearken back to the truth
that lies before us: the truth of the written word, the power of the word as
image. So, why Flash? It would seem that the simplest answer is that it makes
use of a new medium, brings the written word like an offering before the throne
of the internet. The use of Flash in their videos also helps to determine the
unique aesthetic of YHCHI’s work. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also, as I have said, brings the text to life, makes it
dynamic, in a sense “new.” It creates a sense of urgency to the work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Usually you can’t pause a Flash film (you can never pause YHCHI’s
films). You can’t rewind one either. If you’re unable to remain rapt enough in
the text to not miss anything for the 4-8 minutes that the videos normally
take, your only option is to rewatch the entire video. The strategy here, I
suppose, is not to coerce the viewer into rewatching the text over and over
(although, certainly I wouldn’t exclude that desire on the filmmakers’ parts).
The benefit, I suspect, is the sense of urgency that is created out of the
elusivity of the text: the words literally flash before your eyes—there one
moment, gone the next—and as much as any text amounts to a narrative of any
kind, or to a cohesive “whole,” each of its parts is essential. The tone of the
musical score, of course, in conjunction with the speed and rhythm of the
animation itself, primarily determine the intensity with which any of their
films is watched, and yet, they all, despite these two factors (of music and rhythm)
possess the same “ephemeral” quality—ephemeral, and yet, as in “Dakota” in
particular, an ephemerality approached with the force of Thor’s hammer—not at
all delicate, rather, somehow, in the “heaviness” (“Heavy Industries”) of its
type, the matter-of-factness of its black-and-white, the simple largeness of
the letters on the screen, definite, static. These films seem at once to
introduce and undermind their quality of impermanence.<br />
<br />
The “stories” or poems of the films seem to be primarily anecdotal in nature. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite being obviously highly
choreographed, they seem (sort of like the “text” in Roggenbuck’s films) off-the-cuff,
almost unrehearsed, or, as I said before, conversational. They are disseminated
impersonal (as they say in their video/“interview” “<a href="http://www2.tate.org.uk/intermediaart/the_art_of_sleep.shtm" target="_blank">THE ART OF SLEEP</a>”) to a “ready-made” internet audience, and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>yet, in their tone, feel extremely intimate—perhaps, at
least in part, due to their collaborative nature. One could imagine, for
example, the “text” existing initially in the form of a recorded dialogue
between Chang and Voge, and then being transcribed into hypertext. However, as
I argue is the case with Roggenbuck’s videos, the “spontanaity” of its tone
does not, of course, detract from the artistic quality or merit of the content.
In fact, as we see, YHCHI’s films, out of all the contemporary poetry-films I’ve
looked at so far on this blog, have received the “highest” critical acclaim,
having been shown, for example, in the TATE Modern. In their video “CREDITS”
they seem to provide a list that attributes the scores of their various other
works to the rightful musicians, but the text is original—in the case of “DAKOTA,”
<a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937080.001.0001/acprof-9780199937080-chapter-4" target="_blank">they've said</a>, based on Ezra Pound’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cantos I</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">II</i>. But, they also stated, (and
this seems to be, for the duo, a particularly relevant point in the context
of their apparently very complicated relationship to art) this relationship to
a primary text is not essential in appreciating the work. <br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8_5ysE2udc" target="_blank">I lived among girls</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Keith Newton</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">A</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">nother poetry-film I want to
look at features the poem “I lived amongst girls” by Keith Newton and the song “I
Wanna Know Girls” by Portastatic. It was recommended to me by Max Greestreet,
who said of it the following: “I don’t mean by ‘placed onto’ that a video
existed first, because the person who made this video got the poem from Keith
and then shot footage and built it around the song, as a commission job for
Merge Records (maybe they reissued a Portastatic record or the company was
celebrating an anniversary or something — I was told the story of how this
happened, but I’ve forgotten the details.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">This video-poem interests me
because, like works of YHCHI above, it did not, it sounds like, necessarily set
out to make itself into a poetry-film—it presents itself, probably, to most
viewers, as a music video—and yet, I think we can rightly call it one. Two
things strike me as being particularly lovely about this video: 1. the
attention to space in the film, and 2. the overlap between the lyrics of the
song and the words of the poem and how these two separate “texts” interact with
one another. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">By attention to space, I mean
simply the way the film seems to have considered and accounted for, either during
some stage or at all stages in its production, the problem of the space of the
poem vs. the that of the images. The shot of the airline runway, while being
appropriate to the content of the poem (its theme of “leaving” and “returning”),
but also works to cut the screen horizontally and provide a sort of “empty”
background, in which the poem can reside. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">My second point you get a
feeling of by looking at the titles of the two works (the poem and the song):
their similarities are obvious and their differences slight. We might say that
the poem does some of the work of storytelling that lyrics usually don’t. People
do not always agree, although I would argue, that song lyrics are not the same
as the words of a poem (in most cases)—that poems and songs do different work.
Where a poem relies completely upon itself for all the weight of the emotional pull,
lyrics have the instrumental sound to rely upon. In the case of this video, in a
way, the music (central to so many of the poetry-films we’ve looked at so far,
in setting a tone for poetry works) seems to “carry” both the lyrics and the
poem, with the lyrics and the music echoing and reinforcing the words and
emotional force of the poem. It’s a balance that could easily have become a
kind of unintelligible cacophony, but that instead presents two “texts” at the
same time that are so dissimilar in such subtle and compatible ways that they
seem to work together. (Another trick is in providing visual backdrops that are
interesting without distracting from that interplay.) To demonstrate some of
the force that a poem must elicit textually, notice how, while the song goes
about its business of being a song (leading into a guitar solo) the poem marches
on with lines providing a kind of emotional conclusion to the the deeper, more
personal account it has constructed:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">There are revolutions among us,<br />
but no names for what’s been overturned.<br />
After the familiar rooms are ransacked,<br />
even the girls look at one another like strangers,<br />
as if they were strangers who we lived among.<br />
How will you know who anyone is<br />
among those blurred figures on the stairs,<br />
vanishing like thieves in the daylight. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://adultish.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-will-you-know-who-anyone-is.html" target="_blank">Here</a>,
coincidentally, is the blog post of another poet talking about this video. <br />
And, happily, <a href="http://onthemessiersideofneat.blogspot.com/2009/02/powerpoint-vs-poweryak-press.html" target="_blank">another one</a>. (This one reports that Phil Morrison made the video.) [Edit: This blog is now listed as invitation-only. :( Sorry, folks.]</span></span></div>
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Laura Theobaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14717166881197210901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6680702003121216301.post-20799360398079040092014-03-01T01:09:00.003-08:002019-01-16T15:23:55.117-08:00Eventually you will be dead but today you are not, the giant<h3 style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Eventually you will be dead but today you are not, (2013)<br />Steve Roggenbuck</span></i></h3>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In following up with the
“second” of the two divisions articulated and defined in my <a href="http://theirreducible.blogspot.com/2014/02/lost-book-found-1996-jem-cohen-this.html">last
post</a>—“second,” perhaps, because it is, historically, the most recent to develop as an
intentional form—I would like to focus on two contemporary video-poem artists
who seem to me to be of central importance to the genre. In regards to the “canonization” of poetical forms, I suggest that these two poets—Kate
Greenstreet and Steve Roggenbuck—though they are drastically different in
approach, have pioneered the genre, as we understand it, of contemporary poetry-film,
and set important precedents with their work. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The first of these, <a href="http://livemylief.com/">Steve Roggenbuck</a>, has also championed the
movement <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_literature">alt-lit</a>,
which is defined in a number of a ways, stylistically and in terms of content,
that I won’t attempt much to summarize here, but which has much to do with “online
presence,” online publishing, and internet culture, and, in Roggenbuck’s case,
and sometimes others, intentional misspelling, “posi-core,” branding, straight-edge, healthy
lifestyles, and veganism. Perhaps to some degree like Greenstreet, he is also known
for a kind of “grassroots” approach in cultivating a “poetry-lifestyle” and
following: he has traveled extensively in the states by bus and other means,
organizing poetry events and gatherings outside (mainly) the realm of academia,
appealing primarily to similar young poets and performers. He has also set a precedent in
conducting <a href="https://www.spreecast.com/">Spreecast</a> poetry readings
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">This poetry-video, titled “Eventually you
will be dead but today you are not,” is a good example of Roggenbuck’s poetry-film aesthetic: a handheld camera is pointed by the poet directly at himself in
close-up, often off-centered, partially out-of-frame, walking outdoors, “in
nature”; ambient music accompanies the entirety of the film; Roggenbuck speaks
directly into the camera; and the film is heavily edited, with short, quick
intervals between shots. The overall tone is high-energy, full of impact,
intense. In the case of this particular film, shots of the poet speaking into
the camera are interlaced with “found” (appropriated) images from popular films
and videos (“Independence Day,” “Air Bud,” Rebecca Black’s viral video for “Friday,”)
and audio clips of motivational speakers—these images coincide with the poet’s "textual" references to popular culture: “Carlos Mencia,” “The Rock,” “Will Smith,”
“Bagel Bites,” etc.<br />
<br />
Like most of Roggenbuck’s videos, this one raises a number of questions about
its terms. Roggenbuck has published three books/e-books of poetry that
themselves push the boundaries of ideas about poetry by making the same sort of
moves that we see in this video: by making pop-culture references (Justin
Bieber), by using “internet speech,” jokes, and witticisms, and an “internet-y”
conversational tone. None of these factors are, alone, groundbreaking, but,
together, as we see in the video, they form an end product that somehow breaks
from our traditional (or even nontraditional) understanding of poetry. In his
videos, the characteristics that define Roggenbuck’s written works are
intensified by the fact that Roggenbuck seems to be improvising the lines of
the “poems” that he speaks into the camera. Whether or not he does in fact improvise,
I don’t know for sure. I suspect (from interviews, blog posts, and the quality of the content) that some time
is spent rehearsing or planning the scenes he films. Regardless,
the videos seem to challenge collective notions about poetry, as Roggenbuck
himself seems to recognize—specifically in his video “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGyloBitGjc">am i even a poet anymore?</a>” Explicitly here Roggenbuck seems to raise a number of questions about poetry and
literature and to dismiss conventional means of disseminating literature as
outdated. He <a href="http://www.steveroggenbuck.com/2011/05/toward-more-flowing-culture-lit-20.html">advocates</a>,
instead, a broader view of literary activities. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Yet, he
still refers to himself as a poet, and is a poet, in the most obvious sense of the
word (having published volumes of poetry). Can the poet’s words in “Eventually you will be dead” be considered
poetry? Does the film’s seeming spontaneity cause us to resist this
terminology—paired with the poet’s own self-imposed, or self-recognized, issues
with terms like “poet” and “poetry”? Should it be referred to as a poetry-film?
Perhaps, as with Anger’s <span style="background: #f9f9f9; color: #666666;">“<a href="http://theirreducible.blogspot.com/2014/02/lost-book-found-1996-jem-cohen-this.html">Eaux
d’ Artifice</a>,” we should leave it to the filmmaker to determine the
categorization </span>of his films, and respect his
hesitancy or intentional decision not to assign labels to his work. Most importantly, with
Roggenbuck, we have a poet who seems naturally to understand the extreme
malleability of language: that the written and spoken word, that terms and
definitions, are inherently fluid and subject to change—a poet who navigates the
terrain of language with astonishing caprice.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">the giant, (2010)<br />Kate Greenstreet</span></i></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Kate
Greestreet’s work, on the other hand, provides a much more comfortable entryway into the
genre of poetry-film (in my opinion) in its most agreeable form. On her <a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/home.html">website</a>, she displays these
works straightforwardly and unproblematically under the clickable heading “video
poems.” The earliest of these, “the giant,” was made in conjunction with her
second full-length poetry collection “the last 4 things” and appeared on a DVD enclosed
in the inside of its back cover. The film, like Roggenbuck’s films,
demonstrates heavy editing techniques: numerous short, quick shots spliced continuously
together. The overall effect of the editing, however, the video-poem’s tone,
is completely different than that of Roggenbuck's: it is reserved, steady, rhythmic in pace. Unlike
Roggenbuck’s film, the poetry is non-diegetic, and, in fact, Greenstreet does
not appear visually at all in this film. The visual elements, like Roggenbuck’s,
are meticulously arranged, highly aesthetic, and at times refer to their audio
components (corn when “corn” is spoken, an image suggesting “windows,” a blown
out image or a negative for “flash of light”), while at other times, they do not. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Like many of
Greenstreet’s films, the images seem to be comprised of the poet's own amassed footage, and often focus on travel (here, the train, images shot from a moving
vehicle), often abstracted through close-up, high contrast, repetition (grates
and grids), comparison (split screens), or partial or distorted context (the
genius of the toy ship, which at first might seem to be an actual ship, but
then is lifted out of its rocky landscape). One can't help comparing many of these quailties to <a href="http://theirreducible.blogspot.com/2014/02/lost-book-found-1996-jem-cohen-this.html">Jem
Cohen’s <i>Lost Book Found</i></a>. <br /><br />
It’s notable that in the context of the earliest of the poetry-films featured
on <a href="http://www.thevolta.org/medium-archive.html">The Volta: Medium</a>
(a heavily aesthetically-selective publisher of poetry-film),
Greenstreet’s was one of the first to utilize a number of the techniques that I have pointed out in "the giant": one of the first to do more than simply portray the poet on-screen
reading or reciting poems for the camera in the course of one single, continuous shot; to open up the field to experimentation and a focus on the
possibilities of the genre; and, seemingly, one of the first to recognize the poetry-film as (like any other film) being comprised of separate and
equal parts. (Of course, we must remember that I am referring to a particular kind of poetry-film here—the distinction between Greenstreet's kind and others—that of Jem Cohen, Kenneth Anger, and others—is made in my <a href="http://theirreducible.blogspot.com/2014/02/lost-book-found-1996-jem-cohen-this.html" target="_blank">second post</a>.) The audio, one may notice, is clear and of good quality—not at all
muffled by ambient or diegetic interference. Even Greenstreet’s vocal tone
seems attuned: clear, conversational, not loud or quiet, expressive, inflected, one
feels, in appropriate places, yet rhythmic, and, in that sense, lyrical. <br />
<br />
Contrast once more the overall effect of “the giant” with that of Roggenbuck’s film.
Although one might certainly watch “Eventually you will be dead but today you
are not” a number of times with enjoyment, its primary concern (arguably, I'm sure) does not seem
to be to create a work of art that may be enjoyed purely for its aesthetic qualities. Here its detail and intricacy, rather, seem to serve a
different purpose: to facilitate the experience of an initial watching, to envelope
and surrender its audience by presenting itself as a positive and fulfilling
experience. In Greenstreet’s film, the attentiveness apparent in the visual
elements and the sheer curiosity of the spoken words, along with their careful
delivery (the sound), create a kind of complexity for the viewer that might be described, at
moments in the film, as a battle between sight and sound. The viewer wishes to hear, then to
see, then to understand—switching between these active positions of listener,
viewer, processor of information, throughout the duration of the almost two
minute film. This is the type of video one wants to watch more than once, in
order to extract discriminately from its rich and careful composition. <br />
<br />
Both, certainly, may be called poetry films, both are highly constructed, both
I think achieve their respective purposes, and, yet, as with all similarly
attentive works, their effect could hardly be more dissimilar. This is
why, to my thinking, these two poets occupy such an important place in the
realm of poetry film. They understand the power of film and all its elements
and address these issues separately and with their own unique aesthetics. </span><span style="font-family: "cambria";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Laura Theobaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14717166881197210901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6680702003121216301.post-32412674281809007992014-02-15T20:59:00.000-08:002019-01-16T15:42:53.648-08:00Lost Book Found, The Moose, Laux d' Artifice <h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><a href="https://youtu.be/_MYh9YmVlxc">Lost Book Found</a></i>, (1996)<br />Jem Cohen</span></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSikly8Bji3LGwKf1zc9hU6sxfDAPOCsHbaXsyK22ifPsdcA_R3kpPhed9EUM0tbMuJZMYmy2BDfXNkz4OjU57CvYKSJornbYMdcoyLj110Sg-sYNE_tgTJmRVXdkoivQ7Jt74wEOk6i0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+5.42.02+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="662" data-original-width="1312" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSikly8Bji3LGwKf1zc9hU6sxfDAPOCsHbaXsyK22ifPsdcA_R3kpPhed9EUM0tbMuJZMYmy2BDfXNkz4OjU57CvYKSJornbYMdcoyLj110Sg-sYNE_tgTJmRVXdkoivQ7Jt74wEOk6i0/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+5.42.02+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This week Godshall and I looked at a few films that
are, again, representative of a number of ideas about poetry and film. The
first of these is “Lost Book Found,” by Jem Cohen, auteur of a number of
documentaries following and/or collaborating with musical talents from the eighties
and onward, including Elliot Smith, Fugazi, Blonde Redhead, Godspeed You Black Emperor!,
R.E.M., and so on. “Lost Book Found,” predictably possibly, is a film that also
leans in the direction of documentary, “documenting” as it were, retrospectively, a trajectory that leads the narrator to obtain a mysterious and,
arguably, poetry-filled, anonymous found notebook, as well as the filmmaker’s own
thoughtful meanderings in NYC during the 80s and 90s as a street vender and filmmaker.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
Last week, Godshall and I discussed the concept of the “poetic” in film,
contemplating the ideas that this word encompasses for people who talk about
films as possessing this uncertain quality: What does it mean when we say that
a film is “poetic”? For one, the word seems at times to describe an emotional
response: the film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">feels</i> like a poem,
it evokes a feeling that we describe as “poetic”—the elements (lighting, sound,
editing, etc.) coincide in a way that produces a particular kind of emotional
response—a response of the kind that we expect from a
poem. It may be used to describe those moments in a film that present themselves
in ways that permit expression that goes beyond the literal. In the case of
“Lost Book Found,” we have a landslide of examples of this occurrence: scenes
in which words from the abstract noun-lists that seem to fill the pages of “the lost book” (“forest, a clock, a fossil, undertow”) are spoken monotonously over
sequences filled with unassociated, or freely-associated images of sign posts,
shop windows, graffiti, trash blowing in the streets. Think back to scenes in
“Wings of Desire”: scenes with eclipsed whispers and sullen crowds. The
“meaning” behind these sequences is not immediately clear, and there is not, I
suppose, a singular meaning to be extrapolated from them. In this sense, these
sequences represent our general ideas about what a poem is like: there may be
no singular “answer” or explanation. They lend themselves to subjective
interpretation. As Max Greenstreet, who recommended to me “Lost Book Found,”
said of the film “it 'thinks like a poem.'” They resist useful summary, in
certain instances meeting that “requirement” for the poetry-film; they refuse
an objective account; they encourage, rather, freethinking, imaginative thought. They "feel" poetic.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
Another interpretation of the concept of “the poetic” in film is that it may
arise at times in a film in which the progress of the narrative slows, stops,
or otherwise breaks away from time as we experience it—a trick we see so frequently
in film that we hardly see it at all, and one that is executed in an eternity
of ways—it may involve a simple jump cut, for example, or a change in scene.
There are moments in “Lost Book Found” in which Cohen shoots the footage “in
slow motion,” manipulating the recording process in such a way that an image of
a plastic bag swaying over a sidewalk is slowed slightly, almost imperceptibly
at first. It is interesting that scenes like this, which manipulate
time—specifically, in which time is slowed—also feel more poetic—as if there is the
subliminal understanding that poetry also produces the effect that time has
slowed or stopped. And it is likely that this feeling—this experience of time
almost standing still—would be described by readers who find themselves
enraptured by a work, “caught-up” in the world that the artist has created. Alternatively,
it seems to be moments that are more literal, more realistic, and “natural” (that
seem to portray time accurately) that that strike us as “less poetic.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
What happens during these moments—in which the viewer/reader becomes rapt?
Godshall referenced a passage from Joyce's “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” which
talks about the experience of “aesthetic arrest,” to help articulate this
experience:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">The instant wherein that supreme quality</span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;"> <span style="background: white;">of
beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is apprehended</span> <span style="background: white;">luminously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness
and</span> <span style="background: white;">fascinated by its harmony is the
luminous silent stasis of esthetic</span> <span style="background: white;">pleasure,
a spiritual state very like to that cardiac condition which</span> <span style="background: white;">the Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani, using a phrase
almost as</span> <span style="background: white;">beautiful as Shelley's, called
the enchantment of the heart. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">In these moments of “the
luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure,” which we might also describe as
an emotional response to some poetic element, perhaps what we are experiencing is an
absence of thought, a release from anxiety; we become something like wholly
receptive vehicles, fully absorbed in the act of experience, pushed out of
consciousness by the force of the vision that imposes itself, and it is
this removal, this distancing from the self, this momentary separation that
allows for a kind of enjoyment. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">To refer back again to our </span><a href="http://theirreducible.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-cabinet-of-dr.html" style="font-family: inherit;">working
criteria</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"> regarding the tentative aspects of the poetry-film, “Lost Book
Found” does not seem to resist a useful summary—albeit one would surely need to
leave out much about those moments that are most “poetic,” least literal, those
that hold the most interpretive value. It does possess a pretty straightforward
narrative structure, in line with our (admittedly increasingly worrisome) criterion that the
poetry-film should typically not possess the same narrative conventions as a
dramatic film (more on this in my discussion on “The Moose” by Elizabeth
Bishop). Furthermore, the subject of the film does not appear to be a poem, an
assertion based somewhat on the supposition that the “lost book” of the film
should not be interpreted as a poem—a question we must leave for to Jem Cohen and to another day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">
Rather, I think, bearing in mind the personal nature of the film, the
documentary-style narrative structure, the effect of self-examination through
an outward gaze, the constructed “seeking” nature of our protagonist-persona, the
presence of spoken narrative text, the apparent method of inquiry in the film,
and to an extent even the heavy editing and non-exegetic play with sound in the
film, the film is able to fall rather squarely into the realm of essay-film (refer
to essays by <a href="http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/gustafson/film%20223/Adorno-The%20Essay%20As%20Form.pdf">Adorno</a>,
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=QOVjntJ2qYsC&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=lopate+centaur&source=bl&ots=WhkOG2QUgc&sig=BONelYXZir0Bd7ah4QXMsBhiCZM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=G8r_Ur_JG6Xw2gW9iYHIBQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=lopate%20centaur&f=false">Lopate</a>,
<a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/frm/summary/v049/49.2.rascaroli.html">Rascarolli</a>,
and <a href="http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-subject-of-documentary">Renov</a>,
e.g., for more on the subject). </span></span></div>
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<h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE64V8rnjFg">The Moose</a></i>, (1997)<br />Elizabeth Bishop</span></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNmy1z17Hb0Vj82WARGSXHL4n7D-grugAhVhjPv74GsD05hyphenhyphenQi4msI2HiPQ0QJ9YtRplY4WD_q-j5LbRk3khT3q9dc1tFjitMPmm3swomovk0-rsrZ_NQgvpBZA2B-JQnvEu0ZIcGgyt8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+5.29.58+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="912" data-original-width="1296" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNmy1z17Hb0Vj82WARGSXHL4n7D-grugAhVhjPv74GsD05hyphenhyphenQi4msI2HiPQ0QJ9YtRplY4WD_q-j5LbRk3khT3q9dc1tFjitMPmm3swomovk0-rsrZ_NQgvpBZA2B-JQnvEu0ZIcGgyt8/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+5.29.58+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">This four-and-a-half minute poetry-film is from an
hour-long segment by the “Voices & Visions” television series and is
another recommended by Max Greenstreet. The series began in 1988, and featured <!--EndFragment--><a href="http://www.learner.org/resources/series57.html">13 major American poets</a>.
This short film obliterates our first criterion, by presenting us with,
undoubtedly, a poetry-film, which uses a very conventional narrative structure
to tell the story of the poem, which itself is narrative. It is questionable, however,
whether or not the poem can be said to resist useful summary. One could, I
think, summarize the film (and the poem) by saying that a weary traveler taking
a bus from the coast of Nova Scotia “all the way to Boston” is suddenly struck
with joy by the unexpected presence of a moose standing momentarily in the
bus’s path. Such a summary is useful to some extent, in helping a reader to
understand the basic structure of the film and the poem, but, how important to
the poem are those aspects that are left out of this summary? What do we lose, in other words, as readers, by summarizing in this way?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">There is much the textual poem
“sees” that its visual counterpart (the film) does not reveal in its effort to portray the poem literally. In fact, huge sections of the poem are left out of the film:
nearly sixteen stanzas altogether. We see nothing, for example, of the minutia
described of the fog that appears in the <a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15213">full text</a> of the
poem:</span></div>
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<span style="background: #f9f9f9; color: black; font-family: inherit;">Its cold, round crystals <br />
form and slide and settle <br />
in the white hens' feathers, <br />
in gray glazed cabbages, <br />
on the cabbage roses <br />
and lupins like apostles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9;">What does it say of the
process of poetry-film that the filmmakers found it necessary to omit such a
large part of Bishop’s poem? Was the struggle they were attempting to overcome
by their omission the struggle to portray the story visually in a literal way? What
would it say about poetry as a whole, if we were to assume that some of the
reasoning behind the abridged version was that the filmmakers felt that the full
poem would not hold a television audience’s attention? How might Bishop have
felt about this version of a poem that, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=the+moose+bishop+20+years&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS503US503&oq=the+moose+bishop+20+years&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64l3.9188j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8">evidently</a>,
took her 20 years to accomplish? <br />
<br />“The Moose,” surely another of the earliest poetry-films,
satisfies two other of our criterion for the genre: (1.) the subject of the
film seems to be a poem, and (2.) it is short (roughly the length it would take
to read a typical poem). Of course, it satisfies this latter requirement by
omitting a good deal of the four-page poem’s content, but in doing this,
it comes to mirror the length of a “typical poem,” which we might say is about
a page. <br />
<br />
As a note, “The Moose” employs a kind of pleasant and unusual construct: aberration
not only through omission, but through the introduction of commentary and
readings from multiple voices. A method echoed somewhat by the
presence of the haunting “voice” of the book of Cohen’s “Lost Book Found.”</span> The effect is unusual and pleasing. Although aberrated, it gives Bishop's poem a different sort of breadth, the breadth that comes from the sense of the poem effecting many lives, having a living audience and lineage. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"><a href="https://youtu.be/itUr5ihcakw">Laux d’ Artifice</a></span></i><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">, (1953)<br />
Kenneth Anger</span></span></h3>
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</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNNNXid0o_nczuPqA2BN7x5BLzFBkEbZgtPo-TCPGv5jfKEgu7D4RH6cplRElVMR6e9dNciJOHsbad3mdCPpg3iB-tOJVD9yASAjwx4hUjgH2-WaoAijr33hhz6GcF7XkuOzEhhT_BbrA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+5.40.06+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="808" data-original-width="1330" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNNNXid0o_nczuPqA2BN7x5BLzFBkEbZgtPo-TCPGv5jfKEgu7D4RH6cplRElVMR6e9dNciJOHsbad3mdCPpg3iB-tOJVD9yASAjwx4hUjgH2-WaoAijr33hhz6GcF7XkuOzEhhT_BbrA/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+5.40.06+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: inherit;">Kenneth Anger’s films (brought to my
attention by Zack Godshall) are an important inclusion to the topic of our
conversation for a couple of reasons. For one, they raise the question of
intent, and for another, the question of the necessity of a textual component
in a poetry film. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: inherit;">Consider the poem appearing below, by Man Ray. </span><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">(Thank you for this example, Laura
Mullen.) The title of this poem “Lautegeicht” (1924) has been translated from
the German as “Loud Poem” or “Sound Poem.” The piece has at times been referred
to as a painting of a poem or as an erasure, but even these terms imply that
what is at the heart of the piece, despite the fact that there is no text in it,
is a poem. (There is also </span><a href="http://velvetmedia.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/man-ray-lautgedicht-1924/" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">this
version</a><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"> of “Lautegeicht” floating around). </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: inherit;">
Why do we grant or accept that “Lautegeicht” is a poem, considering it has no
text? In part, I suppose it is because the black horizontal lines seem to equal
about the length of words set in type on a page, that the combination of
shorter and longer lines gives us the clear impression of words arranged in a
logical order, and that these lines seem to be end-stopped rather than
continuous, in the way of most poems. Certainly, visually, despite the
tremendously important omission of text, “Lautegeicht” <i>looks</i> like a poem (similar to the way, perhaps, many films <i>feel</i> “poetic”). One implication of “Lautegeicht”
is that a work may be referred to as a poem, even if it does not have text, if
it is similar enough to a poem in some other substantial way.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5RLP58tBOZENgg0R39_egSqmfTzAyRz-jDY7oPzfDScgKnu86Hcm08cV8p1nlCadjrs712sbNrHFs13o7KD7c6DUjYtTzBIZJLnUnvQwisvLwYf1ysjBm9hyphenhyphenfwMqHPvTtZyAK6-79iSk/s1600/1e2feb4c839cb75f27ed53ee9942f9b3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="545" data-original-width="423" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5RLP58tBOZENgg0R39_egSqmfTzAyRz-jDY7oPzfDScgKnu86Hcm08cV8p1nlCadjrs712sbNrHFs13o7KD7c6DUjYtTzBIZJLnUnvQwisvLwYf1ysjBm9hyphenhyphenfwMqHPvTtZyAK6-79iSk/s320/1e2feb4c839cb75f27ed53ee9942f9b3.jpg" width="248" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">But I think there is another important
reason that we are able to agree on this classification of “Lautgedicht,” and
that is that it <i>calls</i> <i>itself</i> a poem—it presents itself as one
by Man Ray eponymously. This is what I mean by intent and also by the
importance of the presence of language. If we do not need text in order for a
poem to be considered a poem, then do we need it (or dialogue, or narration) for
a poetry-film to be called a poetry-film? Is the artist’s intent enough, or
should the film resemble a poem in some other way? <br /><br />
I do not mean to suggest that Anger has called “Eaux d’ Artifice” a poetry
film. According to <a href="http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/11553/1/20-qas-kenneth-anger">this</a>
interview, another of his films—“Fireworks,” perhaps his most popular—was
awarded a “prize for poetic film,” but typically his films seem to be described
as experimental. Indeed the line between experimental and poetry-films is a
fine one. Especially since experimental films, as a rule, seem to be frequently
referred to as “poetic.” In <a href="http://www.studycollection.co.uk/poetry.html">this</a> article, (found on
the Wikipedia page for “poetry-film”), </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">William Wees (author of several books on
avant-garde film) says that “a number of avant-garde film and video makers have
created a synthesis of poetry and film that generates associations,
connotations and metaphors neither the verbal nor the visual text would produce
on its own,” suggesting that one difference between experimental film and
poetry film might have hinged upon the presence of text. As this same article
states, many filmmakers that we think of as “experimental” have referred to
themselves as “film poets” and their films “film poems,” but their descriptions
of this genre seem simply to stand in contrast with dramatic cinema,
documentary, and something called “abstract film,” which Maya Deren describes
as imitating abstract painting. But these early definitions of poetry-film seem
to do no more to define themselves outside of oppositional terms than to say
that its films are “poetic”—poetic in the sense, I would guess, that I have
tried to illustrate in the above section on “Lost Book Found.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; tab-stops: 298.65pt;">
<span style="background: #f9f9f9; color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">However, it
would be unjust, it seems, not to allow for the claims that earlier
experimental filmmakers laid about their works, for the artist’s intent. For the
time being, it seems best to say that there have been historically two types of
poetry-films: those that define themselves as “film poems” according to the
description above (may not possess textual elements, but possess other “poetic”
elements, i.e.: “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” many of
Brakhage’s films) and those that place themselves within the realm of
poetry-film by meeting another central tenet: that the subject of these films
seems to be a poem (“The X Is Black,” “The Moose”). This premise allows that,
following the example of Man Ray’s “Lautegeicht,” a poetry-film, like a poem,
need not possess text. It also allows that Anger’s “Eaux d’ Artifice” could be
called a poetry-film, even though it also contains no text. In making the
distinction, then, in this case, the filmmaker’s intent would need to be
consulted: whether or not “Eaux d’ Artifice” is a poetry-film would be based on
whether Kenneth Angers would describe it in these terms. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Laura Theobaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14717166881197210901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6680702003121216301.post-8580585251809813472014-02-07T12:51:00.000-08:002019-01-16T16:13:13.270-08:00The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Night Mail, Wings of Desire, The X Is Black<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><a href="https://youtu.be/aimAeeDx2p4" target="_blank">The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari</a></i>, (1920) <br />Robert Weine</span></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN4thz22wC_hxKILJDba9nL7WFFRXg_HTz7c20F-8KQdG6Ri6fj04FNC_zu1OJe7-SNN_IawjMtJxU4QegRiaSP2AdhUd53yW-9D4fYbnhLb3wkWjXmpiTeBuDdvAwyD2IikdRRpW-8nM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+6.03.43+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="907" data-original-width="1320" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN4thz22wC_hxKILJDba9nL7WFFRXg_HTz7c20F-8KQdG6Ri6fj04FNC_zu1OJe7-SNN_IawjMtJxU4QegRiaSP2AdhUd53yW-9D4fYbnhLb3wkWjXmpiTeBuDdvAwyD2IikdRRpW-8nM/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+6.03.43+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This film was recommended to me by poet and Professor <a href="https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/qa_american_poetry/page_30/" target="_blank">Lara Glenum</a> as an
example of a gem of early silent cinema and of high German Expressionsim, and
as a response to my request for films that should be considered in the search
for understanding of the genre of poetry-film. From this perspective, it seems,
<i>The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari </i>should
have rich interpretive value—in terms of the psychological and artistic status
of high German art and antebellum German society’s psychological bents.
According to <a href="http://kolokoz.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/the-cabinet-of-dr-caligari-german-expressionism-visually-and-thematically/">one
critic</a>, <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Weine wanted to reveal the “uncertainty” of the human mind, which goes
far deeper than we are able to predict or understand clearly. “Therefore, there
are some aspects in this film which significantly involve with the idea of mind
control, dual identity and psychological terror.” One can see how these tropes might
reflect the psychology of German society at this time—a time during which Germany
was occupied by American forces and grappling with defeat after WWI, for
example. Certainly the psychological underpinnings of the film's concepts have important
implications for a time in which Nazism was gaining a foothold in German
politics as well. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">
However, being that my research has pretty exclusively to do with the question
of the history, development, and current status of the genre of poetry-film,
and being that I have neither the background nor the time necessary to devote
to explorations into questions involving these aspects of the film as fully as
their importance and seriousness would require, I will need to bypass questions
regarding the socio-political implications of the film—and the German
Expressionist movement with which it is concerned/associated—altogether and focus
entirely on the film’s merits in terms of its relation to the genre of
poetry-film. (Although I will try to at least acknowledge the context of the
films in the course of my study, I imagine I will need to ultimately observe
and note this context only in passing, in order to remain focused on the
purpose of this course.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">
What is interesting about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dr. Caligari</i>
and the first few films in this study—I will address these individually as well
as broadly in this response—is that they seem to bare little resemblance to my
concept and experience of “poetry-films” as I understand them. For instance,
in-line with the standard tropes of horror films, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dr. Caligari</i> depicts a number of heroes and villains, is driven by
its plot, and resolves itself in an orderly fashion. To me, this type of transparent
linear structure does not reflect the ideology of more experimental films, which
might cross into the territory of “poetry-film” with less resistance. The plot of
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dr. Caligari</i>, for example, might be
summarized in a few short sentences, while, to me, one concept
that seems somewhat essential to poetry and, likewise, poetry films, is that
it resists this kind of summary—<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">what’s
more: its very essence and worth lies in this resistance, in the distinctive
qualities of the thing-in-itself and in the difficulty of “breaking-down,”
synthesizing, or summarizing the “poem” or poet’s logic or intent</b>. While
this film, as I have already implied, is unquestionably complex in terms of its
socio-political implications, it does not seem to me to resist this basic
exercise. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">It seems that if one is to understand the
film as an example of, or even a precursor to, the poetry-film genre at all,
one might focus on the visual aspects of the film—the obscure painted backdrops
and hazy, shadowy effects that seem, in truth, to be intended to reflect the “psychological”
implications of the film more so than any “poetic” intent: the horror is
expressed visually in unusual and disorienting ways as well as in the action of
the film. Therefore, one might ask, “Do these artistic qualities of the film (observed
in backdrop, lighting, etc.) merit a ‘reading’ of the film as poetry?” My
feeling is that they do not. While they certainly are “artistic” and
interesting, and I’m sure, important in regards to the time period and the movement
to which they belong, the visual elements do not register as “poetic,” to any
notable degree. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">In any case, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari</i> is clearly not a poetry-film, despite the fact that certain
aspects of its composition may be called “poetic." To what degree,
however, can we understand the artistic, expressionist methods employed in this
film to inform later generations that move with greater intent and distinction
into the realm of the poetry-film? That is a question that we must keep in
mind, I think, as we continue to move through the content of this course. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">
</div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://youtu.be/a_twehPlRPs" target="_blank">Night Mail</a></i>, (1936)<br />
Benjamin Britten & W.H. Auden</span></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGxAFvEA7eOLj1VEH4YYYDMxGHtsFMXAF2E4mmE-wCvEwRH9AI1z7byUMzp8OKo3MUn0BE6TEcip-9SRdRR7XbHHnisFyM8tm8AmCrb49t_r6dYEvX9LkcS7kycerqlTPGgLKR5PjRvk8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+6.06.39+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="866" data-original-width="1314" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGxAFvEA7eOLj1VEH4YYYDMxGHtsFMXAF2E4mmE-wCvEwRH9AI1z7byUMzp8OKo3MUn0BE6TEcip-9SRdRR7XbHHnisFyM8tm8AmCrb49t_r6dYEvX9LkcS7kycerqlTPGgLKR5PjRvk8/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+6.06.39+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This film was recommended by poet and professor <a href="http://www.lauramullen.biz/">Laura Mullen</a> in response to the same
request for examples of the subject of poetry-film. The implications for this
film as poetry are far more direct, and stated neatly by the author of <a href="http://theamericanscholar.org/all-scotland-waits-for-her/?utm_source=email#.Uu_tRXddLAF">this
post</a>, which also provides ample information on the film’s origins and on
the process of its creation. Though technically not a poetry-film (rather a
documentary produced by Great Britain’s General Post Office with a poem spoken
into its tail end), <i>Night Mail </i>utilizes
the work of the great English poet W.H. Auden to celebrate the marvel of G.B.’s
modern automotive mail delivery system. The author of the post referenced above
provides some insight into the possible socio-political motivations for the making of the short documentary and into some of the technical aspects of the
construction of the film, but <i>Night
Mail</i>, I think, serves us mainly here as a prime example of one of the
earliest instances of poetry appearing in film. What is interesting about this
particular example is that, as opposed poetry-films “proper,” <b>the main focus of the film is not its
poetic content, but rather the poetry serves the purpose of the subject</b>—“serves,”
I mean, both topically and in its enthusiastic approach to that topic.
Referring romantically in this occasional poem to the train as “her,” Auden
states, <b> </b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;"><span style="background: white;">Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;"><span style="background: white;">Snorting noisily as she passes</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;"><span style="background: white;">Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.</span></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;"><br /></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;"><span style="background: white;"><br />Birds turn their heads as she approaches,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;"><span style="background: white;">Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;"><span style="background: white; font-family: inherit;">
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">The staccato rhythm and incessant rhyme
of the four-part poem mimics both the monotonous chugging of the train’s engine
and Brittan’s musical accompaniment, while the content of the lyric relishes beholding
and describing the train’s progress into the lives, and through the emotive
implications of mail, the hearts of English countrymen and women. It is
interesting to note that poetry-in-film’s earliest history mimics one of the
most prevalent utilitarian purposes of and traditions in poetry: to exalt, to
compliment, to provide tribute. In this sense, Auden is the perfect choice to
elicit a rallying response in viewers. Visually, the film survives as a lovely
early document of trains, if you like trains, and a brief but rare revealing of
the guts of a mail-delivery system. A short scene depicting a number of men
standing, sorting before a much greater number of cubbies labeled with the
names of towns, for example, is a quaint and accurate reminder of the lives
behind the letters that appeared in early 20<sup>th</sup> century mailboxes. </span></div>
<h3>
</h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://youtu.be/dwo122meoAA" target="_blank">Wings of Desire</a></i>, (1987)<br />Wim Wenders</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The next two films were
recommended to me by friend and great thinker <a href="http://maxgreenstreet.com/">Max Greenstreet</a> in response to my
request for fodder to help me along my quest for the meaning of “poetry-film.” Here,
I think, in the film that inspired the "Hollywoodized" Meg-Ryan-Nicholas-Cage romance-genre-classic adaptation <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">City of Angels</i>, we have
a film that serves to define our understanding of the concept of poetry-film in
much the same way as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari</i>. By this I mean that both films, while containing “poetic elements," exist well within parameters of a traditional feature film. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wings of Desire</i> has, for example, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dr. Caligari</i>, a pretty straightforward
plot—a plot that drives the action forward to a defined climax and
resolution—and, in this sense, is not extremely experimental. However, the film
does devote large chunks of itself to spanning shots with little-to-no
dialogue, or scenes in which the dialogue represents a muffled and partial
excursion into the thoughts of the film’s seemingly countless characters. Perhaps
it is this sparseness, the keen attention to language that becomes apparent in
these scenes, paired with the deeply personal nature of the character’s
thoughts that reminds us of poetry here. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Indeed, the film was, for
Wenders, at least to some degree, <a href="http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1290-on-wings-of-desire">inspired
by the poetry of Rilke</a>—and a poem titled “<a href="http://www.wim-wenders.com/movies/movies_spec/wingsofdesire/wod-song-of-childhood.htm" target="_blank">Song of Childhood</a>,” written by
Peter Handke at the behest of Wenders specifically for the film, is repeated in
a singsong voiceover attributed to the mind of its central angel character,
Bruno Ganz (“Damiel”), throughout the film. Peter Handke, according to Wenders’
own account (follow link above), also provided much of the interior “dialogue”
of the film: the glimpses into the minds of its characters that the audience is
privy to. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Certainly, in addition to the
language of the film, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ideas</i> in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wings of Desire </i>are also poetic: the
idea of angels, for example, serving as “witnesses” to the inner-turmoil of
mankind, the idea of one angel, then, falling in love with a human and
consequentially sacrificing his powers and immortality in order for the chance
to have his love felt and reciprocated by the object of his adoration. (As I am
writing this, I am realizing that if you were to replace “angel” with “mermaid”
and flip the gender signifiers in the preceding sentence, you would have the
story of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Little Mermaid</i>.)
Visually, the film is stunning: full of high-contrast, invisible shots;
fascinating portrait after fascinating portrait of individuals in the crowd; backdrops
that seem to flow effortlessly into the contemporary out of the “old world...” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Max provided a comment regarding <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wings of
Desire</i> to the effect that he remembered only certain scenes of the film as
“being a Poetry Film”—or maybe a portion of the film, like the first third. I
agree that if you were to isolate certain sections of the film, you might have
a very interesting poetry-film indeed; but (putting its merits <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as a film</i> aside) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wings of Desire</i>, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dr.
Caligari</i> is ultimately bookended and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">held
together by the mechanisms of a more traditional film</b>—to the extent that
even Hollywood saw its potential to appeal to large crowds as a straightforward
romance blockbuster.</span></div>
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<h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cOSMGzdZf8" target="_blank">The X Is Black</a></i>, (1996)<br />Amiri Baraka</span></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjckuRXYRXcA96mmyDUeNBmcUEN4mLoecxbIvrfEnkktF3cbX6eEqXg4RB3qEHCfBsl-NIAGiQKRB0oHg2yWZ6tVtlsWu02NLS7QJs9n70S6N0hyphenhyphenbv_DBDfFXzs3Bqogb5sj2FlCKLY1a8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+6.08.54+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="1224" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjckuRXYRXcA96mmyDUeNBmcUEN4mLoecxbIvrfEnkktF3cbX6eEqXg4RB3qEHCfBsl-NIAGiQKRB0oHg2yWZ6tVtlsWu02NLS7QJs9n70S6N0hyphenhyphenbv_DBDfFXzs3Bqogb5sj2FlCKLY1a8/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-01-16+at+6.08.54+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The last of the films I’m discussing this round was also recommended to me by
Max—before Amiri Baraka died last month. I'm grateful for the opportunity to study (if only very briefly) this important poet near the time of his passing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The X Is Black</i> is the first of the films that
seems, to me, to land squarely within the realm of the poetry-film. This short
segment, featuring the performance and poetry of Amiri Baraka was part of a five-part series originally aired by PBS, which was
also released in its entirety as a CD titled “The United States of Poetry” by
the first poetry record label, Mouth Almighty. To refer to the assertions made
in my former posts, and in terms of its categorization as a poetry film, we may
say of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The X Is Black </i>the following:</span></div>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">The film resists useful summary.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">A poem is the subject of the film.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;">The film does not possess a traditional
narrative structure.</span></li>
</ol>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To expand on these (very much
in-process) criteria, I suggest that we go through them one-by one:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">(1.) The
film resists useful summary. One could reasonably summarize a work like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wings of Desire,</i> by saying the
following: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the film, angels serve as “witnesses” to the inner-turmoil
of mankind. One angel falls in love with a human and, consequentially,
sacrifices his powers and immortality in order for the chance to have his love
felt and reciprocated by the object of his adoration. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">While this summary is,
undoubtedly, leaving out a great deal of the complexity of the emotional and
visual achievements of the film, it is effective in expressing the basic events
of the film. Because the film is primarily narrative (it tells a story) and
because the subject of the film is primarily that story, the film may be summarized
in the manner that I have done without omitting necessary information about the
plot. However, an attempt to provide a summary of the plot of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The X Is Black </i>would sound something
like this: “A man recites a poem.” Since there is only one action in this
summary, and no climax or resolution, the summary does not resemble a plot.
Rather, since (2.—I'm jumping ahead here) the subject of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The X
Is Black </i>is the poem “The X Is Black,” a summary of the film would involve
the explanation first that the subject of the film is the poem, and then, possibly,
an attempt to summarize the poem, which, in itself, should present a number of
challenges. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(2.) The subject of the film is the poem “The X Is Black.” This is
proven, I think, by the lack of any actors or performers in the film besides
the poet/author of the poem and by the lack of attention visually to any
subject matter besides the poet and poem.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>(3.) The film does not possess any of the conventions of a cinematic film: this has been demonstrated, in part, by the difficulty of providing a summary of the action of the film.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I think these definitions can continue, then, to serve us for now. But there is
perhaps at least one other aspect of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
X Is Black</i> that might help us to distinguish it from other types of film,
and particularly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as</i> a poetry-film:
namely, that (4.) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">it is short</b>; specifically
less than two minutes in length—much shorter than a feature length film and
only very slightly longer than a straightforward reading of the poem would take. My prediction is
that, when a film strikes us as being “more like a poetry film,” it will satisfy
these criteria:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> (4.) </span>it will be a
shorter film (it will adhere to about the length of an average poem or poetry reading in its
duration), (3.) it will resist a “useful” summary, (2.) the subject of the film will seem
to be a poem, and (1.) the film will resist conventional narrative structures. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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Laura Theobaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14717166881197210901noreply@blogger.com0