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While Chopping Red Peppers
Like the advice given by the speaker’s father, this kinetic and aural poem is all about “presentation and perfect arrangement.” It is about knowing where to cut visual and aural language, images and sound clips, arranging them on the poem’s space to make an impression. Yet while the speaker seems to be learning what her father has to say, one can sense the tension in her as she conforms to a vision of how one presents oneself and in what contexts. The masculinity of the images juxtaposed with the words “a firm handshake, after church” contrast with the more feminine figure we see leaning by the stove or hunched in silhouette. Listen to this poem and you’ll realize that it hovers in that space between tradition and innovation, expressive orality and through new media, conformity and rebellion, and different types of distance and proximity. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Meri Alexandra Raita - 03.03.2012 - 19:29
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Wired
This video poem presents a nightmarish image of a body that seems to be inspired by Hellraiser and The Matrix. A sitting skeletal naked body with an umbilical-like cord connected to his heart and a screen for a face, inside of which a face grotesquely screams, apparently in pain or a trance (or both) seems to be the speaker for the poem. The verbal part of the poem is delivered entirely by audio, and through electronically distorted voices. The pain in the lyric cyborg speaker for this poem raises questions about medical technologies that artificially extend human life through painful surgical procedures that insert devices like pacemakers to regulate biorhythms. Has this character become posthuman?
(Source: Leonardo Flores)
Kjetil Buer - 31.08.2012 - 10:26
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MetaGenesis
Organized by the Genesis narrative into 7 parts, one for each day, this work places the Biblical story of the creation of the world in conversation with modern times. Its sociopolitical tone is reinforced with references to literary characters, postmodern theorists, scientists, wars, the Internet, and civil rights leaders. Each piece contains a small Flash animation or interactive piece, some of which are clearly e-poems. These are the most delightful parts of this work because they manage to be playful without compromising the tone of the poem, a strategy echoed throughout this whole work. Thuan strikes a delicate balance between solemnity and tongue-in-cheekiness that lowers our guard so the seriousness of his piece can come through to us. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 02.02.2013 - 12:33
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Four Poems
Published the same year as New Digital Emblems (2000), these four short kinetic poems read like subverted graphic design experiments. The bright monochromatic, textured, shaded, or divided backgrounds contained by a borderless window serve as a stage into which words move in from several directions to form and develop the poems. The electronica inspired sounds punctuate moments in each poem, such as the apparition of words or the twist at the end of “Nil,” also emphasizing the rhythm of the scheduled presentation. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 08.02.2013 - 20:00
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Meditation on a Bar Stool
This video poem is a meditation on breath, life, and death inspired by Buddha’s teachings, which may or may not have expired. The poem uses simple animations suggestive of the swelling of a chest as one draws breath, the thinness that comes from letting it out, and the burning of a cigarette. Aptly paced for the meditative contemplation of words, and lines, the poem begins with a quote from Buddha, emphasizing some of its language through animation and scheduling, and then presenting a response from the speaker, who sits at a bar stool, savoring some of the guilty pleasures life has to offer. As you read (and reread) this concise lyric poem, think of what it’s doing with certain binary opposites: exhale/inhale, life/death, outside/inside, and via negativa / via positiva. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 14:19
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Sinking
This poem plays like a short video in which each line is fades in and out of the window, moving or remaining static, with or without the company of another line. The speaker is a young adult who is faced with a vivid image of the reality of being independent— a sink full of dirty dishes— which triggers a memory of learning to swim in Lake Michigan with her mother. Swimming becomes a metaphor for independent adult life in a poem which explores its parallels in revealing ways for both the speaker and her mother. The minimalist video background and music create an important sense of progression that sets the tone for a powerful final line in the poem that should send you right back to replaying the video poem to decide what happens at the end. Does she sink or swim?
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 14:22
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Death Valley
This short poem uses a backdrop of stars flickering and occasionally shooting in the background as lines of text flow up the screen accompanied by images that emphasize some aspects of the text. This is not a romanticized cool night sky with distant stars: its imagery emphasizes the heat of blazing suns. The speaker isn’t a Romantic poet gazing longingly at the unreachable: she describes us as “dangerous” burning as hotly as the stars themselves, but with hellish desire.
The desire to touch the stars is emphasized by the textual responsiveness as each line and stanza moves from the bottom to the top of the screen. Touch the lines with the pointer, and a hissing, loud, whisper of a voice reads the lines out loud, once for each contact, perhaps a reminder of how loud the burning of stars must sound, if sound could carry across such vast, empty, distances.
If we shift our focus from the macroscopic scale of the universe to the microscopic scale of electrical impulses, are those untouchable pixels flickering on the screen equally distant?
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 14:33
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On the Life of Man
What happens when you change a poem’s medium and context? Is it still the same poem? Ingrid Ankerson’s re-production of Raleigh’s poem suggests that it is not.
The first difference is that the “print” version of the poem is designed to direct the reader’s full attention to the written words on the page, with sounds emerging from reading the words, whether aloud or silently. That page is a kind of musical score, designed to produce a performance of musical language in the reader. Anderson’s version transforms the poem into a kind of film (even recreating some of the scratch and dust marks we see projected on movie screens), reformatting and scheduling its lines with pauses different from the kind evoked by the poem. The images of different species of prehistoric man, however, transform this poem the most by recontextualizing its message.
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 14:41
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Anywhere
This collaborative poem combines the Steve Matanle’s words and voice with Ingrid Ankerson’s music and design to produce a well integrated multimedia performance. The poem plays like a short film, requiring no interaction from the readers but commanding aural and visual attention with engaging music, a richly textured vocal performance, and visuals that enhance the experience of the poem. Some lines in the poem are punctuated by the appearance of text, brief animation sequences, and graphical information that enriches the imagery evoked in the spoken words. Timing is all in this brief poem which synchronizes its visuals with the music and rhythms of Matanle’s voice to tell a story of a forbidden love affair that is hurtling towards a destination as inevitable as the train tracks laid across the poem’s visual field.
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 14:46
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Four Letter Words
This combinatorial poem uses random words arranged on a grid changing in seemingly random at different time intervals. The word in the center of the grid distinguishes itself, not only by position, but by its slight overlap with the word that is to replace it. This film technique known as a dissolve adds a layer of depth to the transition by having a 10th word juxtaposed (superposed, really) and by visually representing the time-based mechanism in the poem. The title plays with a double meaning: words that are culturally considered obscene or insulting, and with a constraint of using words with only four letters (see this Scrabble dictionary). Knoebel seems to be foregrounding the latter, thought initially the title points towards the former meaning.
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 22:29
