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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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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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Sky
This poem is built over the song “Don’t Know Why” by Norah Jones, and takes its time doing so, with opening dedications, a slow-paced delivery of the poetic lines, and even some playful credits at the end. The poem’s linguistic text focuses on words used to denote possibilities, missed opportunities, second chances to create a tone similar to the last few sections of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” but using language more fitting of “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town.” The lyrics in Norah Jones’ song enhance the melancholy tone, as well as the images of dusk turning into night and a flower losing its petals. So savor this unhurried poem and lose yourself for contemplation of its details, if only for the space of a song.
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 20:24
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Rude Little Song
This aural piece is a kind of Lettrist sound poem, because it uses verbal language in sub-morphemic units (with thanks to Melissa Lucas for the term). In other words, the poem is concerned with putting together snippets of vocalized language sounds that don’t carry semantic meaning, all performed a capella, recorded, edited, and spatially arranged by Jim Andrews. The visual composition is as non-referential as the sounds, activated by moving the pointer over the pulsating colored squares. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 21:25
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6-string Aria
This brief video poem is delicately built from just a few simple elements: a guitar aria, five handwritten letters, simple animation, and a handful of words scheduled into the presentation. The poem explores different meanings one can arrive from the elements of the word aria, such as air and area. As the letters move and rotate around a common axis, they delineate a space for different readings, as well as the implied space of a relationship in trouble. The gentle reconfiguration of the two hand-drawn “I”s into two mathematical symbols suggest a resolution to the conflict implied by the text, particularly when juxtaposed with the final clustering of the letters.
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 21:48
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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
