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Genius
This delightfully cinematic poem from 2001 is very much of the now, or as Ezra Pound famously said of literature, “news that STAYS news.” The poem connects several trains of thought, aurally and through temporal juxtaposition, dealing with themes of war, changing generations, naps, routine, media, and all the noise that drowns us out. The verbal part of the poem is delivered crisply through the audio track along with a catchy beat, and the visual language emphasizes certain words and phrases layered over composite images and video. Layers and loudness are an important strategy, especially when the music’s volume rises to overwhelm the voice before subsiding to allow the speaker to utter a final line (and visual information) that helps pull the poem together. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 13:25
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Murmuring Insects
This is a heart-wrenching poem that radically recontextualizes Rengetsu’s Tanka (short poems) by juxtaposing it with sounds and voices from the September 11, 2001 attacks. The poem’s title animation presents the letters in the title descending and coalescing into words that reflect on a suggested surface below, using a background of soft night colors, the moon, and night sounds. Three things subvert the serene initial scene: the night sky contains a jet’s vapor trails, and for a few seconds, a highly transparent image of the burning Twin Towers fades in and out right before the date 09.11.01 appears. This juxtaposition and superposition in time and space of images, sounds, and words is the main strategy for constructing a powerful mix of frames of reference, separated by gulfs of time, place, and human experience. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 13:39
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After Persephone
This delicately layered poem builds upon the Persephone myth (briefly told at the beginning of the poem) to reflect on the universal experience of losing a daughter to adulthood and marriage. The visual image in the poem seems to be from a Demeter-like perspective as she sees the faded memory of her little girl, with muted colors and seemingly underwater. The poem progresses by gently directing readers to move the pointers over certain parts of the image, which triggers brief sound and textual sequences that explore the speaker’s state of mind. We also get layers of other images fading in and out, of a grown young woman and a bare field, both of which allude to the myth. This is a powerfully archetypal poem, using the technology to evoke a moment that should resonate with parents of grown children everywhere. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 13:43
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Winter City Sleeps
This video poem is reminiscent of Robert Frost’s “Tree at My Window” with its treatment of internal and external weather. The speaker of the poem is experiencing a metaphorical winter of the soul, exploring the idea poetically, visually, and musically (using “Hymn” by Moby). The scheduling of textual elements and their movement and duration onscreen focuses the reader’s attention on the idea expressed in each line, creating a sequence of ideas that change over time. This allows for turns, shifts, reversals, and re-imaginings, much like the layering of images used by Williams in “The Red Wheelbarrow,” but in time rather than in space. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 13:48
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Representatives
This poem is inspired by the phone conversations made by telemarketing representatives whose peak calling hours were in the early evening, when people are having dinner and perhaps unwinding with a glass of wine after a long day’s work. Written and published in 2001, this poem captures some of the frustration and unexpected human connections that occurred in these contexts before the National Do Not Call Registry was implemented in the U.S. in 2004, effectively ending that kind of telemarketing strategy. Clicking on each pictorial icon triggers a sequence of animated, scheduled text, with accompanying images and music, told from the perspective of each of the two women who seem to find unexpected pleasure in their weekly phone conversations. At least during this time in the history of telemarketing, the phone technology allowed for human interactions, sometimes cordial, sometimes providing opportunities for cathartic venting of pent up frustrations, and occasionally, very rarely, genuine connections and empathy. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 14:13
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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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Dissolution
This responsive poem is structured into an 8 by 4 grid of thumbnail images. By placing the pointer over each square, the image is enlarged, presenting a line of poetry. Moving from square to square, the reader can create line combinations in multiple directions within this grid, creating new line combinations. The order in which one reads each combination can really change how one understands the text. As you read this e-poem, meditate on some of these relations between its beautifully juxtaposed elements: call and response, setup and surprise, subject and predicate, point and counterpoint, image and text, turn and volta.
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 14:38
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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
