Animated Poetry
Why not? In a generation of tech-savvy writers, and youtube teenagers, animated poetry seems to be the way to “make it new” and give poetry a public presence. And it’s catching on. Billy Collins calls them action poems and Todd Boss calls them motion poems. But basically, it’s a poem, plus audio, plus film. Animated poetry is even making an appearance in college syllabi.
But what does animation mean to poetry? I’m worried that poets might not embrace animated poetry, arguing that it steps on the poem’s toes, forces a single interpretation, does the reader’s work for her and makes her lazy. To this I say it’s a new piece of art, a hybrid art that should be taken on its own merits—not given a poetic autopsy.
The charm of animated poetry is that it brings poems and the internet together. It gives us another way to engage in the art. It gives us a new kind of audience and something to do with a poem after it’s written. The point is that we write to engage with others, to make our work public, and animated poetry does that.
Tags: animated poetry, bark, Billy Collins, Todd Boss
I generally don’t like multimedia presentaions–prefer just plain old words–but I feel expanded as a result of watching and hearing this poetry clip.
Sometimes music videos are like animated poetry. Do people make music videos anymore?
I’ve seen a couple of these Todd Boss animations, and I think they’re really cool. I understand the concern about forcing a single interpretation, but film does the same thing with fiction all the time and it doesn’t bother me at all. The film and the story/novel are different animals and can coexist fine. I don’t see why the same can’t be true for a poem.
Sam, that’s an important point about the film and the story/novel. Epic poems look pretty decent in a movie: The Odyssey, Beowulf. But what about contemporary book-length poems rather than classic epics? Who would go see Galway Kinnell’s The Book of Nightmares with me? On the same note, how do we increase the audience for these shorter animated poems?
For all the crap we often spew about how movies “ruined” or “were worse than” the books they’re (loosely) based on, we need to remember that they’re different mediums, with different strengths/weaknesses. (Significant printed-word weakness: no lens flare.) Watching this clip was both entertaining and engaging, and gave me a way to interpret the poem. Not the only way, because in parts I thought to myself, Why that image? Why that zoom? Why that shuddering of the shutters? Etc. So I think people are still apt to interpret the piece in a multitude of ways, and the really important thing is they’re engaged with it, and on a different level than you would have with just a printed poem. And anything that makes people engage with a piece of writing and think about it is fine with me.
I agree with the other comments that this would be another way to look at the relationship between movies and books. I like new media incorporated with poetry and prose, but it doesn’t replace the experience I have when I read myself. If this brings a new audience to poetry, then it must be a good thing and maybe after someone has seen an animated poem by someone they like, they’ll go out and buy more stuff from the poet.
I loved this “motion poem.” But here’s a question: How do we market these? I know, I know. I’m being a capitalist pig, but part of getting the art out into the world is finding the audience. This is what agents and publishers spend their lives thinking about, who will want to read this and how do we bring it to them? So here’s an awful idea: market these multimedia pieces to advertisers the way indie rockers have started selling their songs for Mac or Volkswagen or Gap ads. It feels dirty, but how cool would it be to turn on your TV and see one of your own motion poems out their persuading the world to buy…what…something awesome, fill in the blank. The more I think about it, the more I think it’s a terrible idea, but still, if it was my poem up their for millions to see, I’d be smiling pretty damn big.
Actually, Todd Boss’s Motion Poems venture is–as I understand it–a business venture. I think they’re trying for (eventual) profit. Their website lingo indicates this, anyway, and I almost certain they aren’t a 501(c).
Of course, I could be utterly and totally wrong. I probably should just ask him.
As for marketing, they are certainly going the viral route, with lots of content available on the good old interwebs. That type of marketing is really hit or miss, but of the recent projects I’ve seen lately, this one definitely has a good shot at making it.