A Noiseless Patient Spider
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In this TED-Ed “poetic experiment,” three different animators interpret Walt Whitman's poem “A Noiseless Patient Spider” read by poets Mahogany Browne, Joanna Hoffman, and Rives.
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Theater video tags: animation
Introduction to Poetry
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“I ask them to take a poem / and hold it up to the light...” This animated video by Milos features Billy Collins narrating his poem “Introduction to Poetry” fromThe Apple That Astonished Paris (University of Arkansas Press, 1996). Collins’s new poetry collection, The Rain in Portugal (Random House, 2016), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Poem to My Litter
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“I hope, Maxes, some good in you is of me.” The late Max Ritvo reads “Poem to My Litter” in a short video animated by Nate Milton for WNYC’s Only Human podcast. Ritvo’s debut poetry collection, Four Reincarnations (Milkweed Editions, 2016), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Sawako Nakayasu
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This short film created by Sawako Nakayasu features the poet and translator reading “6.3.2003” from her poetry collection Texture Notes (Letter Machine Editions, 2010). Nakayasu’s translation from the Japanese of The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa (Canarium Books, 2015) by Chika Sagawa was awarded the 2016 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize.
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Aldous Huxley
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“In this book of mine, Brave New World, I postulated a substance called ‘soma’...I think it’s quite on the cards that we may have drugs which will profoundly change our mental states without doing us any harm.” In this Blank on Blank animated video of a 1958 interview with journalist Mike Wallace, Aldous Huxley speaks about his 1932 novel and his predictions for the future of political leadership, propaganda, and technology.
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iO Tillett Wright
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“I never intended to be an activist, and it just kind of very naturally happened because I saw something that was wrong that I cared enough to do something about it.” In this video for School of Doodle, artist, writer, and activist iO Tillett Wright speaks about his project “Self Evident Truths.” Wright’s debut memoir, Darling Days (Ecco, 2016), is featured in “Nine More New Memoirs” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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The Little Prince
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This clip features the trailer for The Little Prince, the first animated feature film adaptation of the classic 1943 French novella, Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Directed by Mark Osborne and voiced by actors including Jeff Bridges, Marion Cotillard, Benicio del Toro, James Franco, Rachel McAdams, and Paul Rudd, the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and will be released in the U.S. on August 5.
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Crazy Salad
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"It's from 'A Prayer for My Daughter' and the lines are 'It's certain that fine women eat / A crazy salad with their meat,' and I thought it was a nice title for a book about women." In this 1975 interview with Studs Terkel, the late Nora Ephron recounts lines by Yeats, the poetic inspiration for the title of her book of essays Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women (Random House, 1975), and talks about her experiences as a journalist and feminist. Animated by Pat Smith, this video is part of PBS Digital Studio's Blank on Blank series.
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The Pleasure of Poetic Pattern
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"Simply put, we are creatures of rhythm and repetition.... Pattern can be pleasure." In this TED-Ed lesson by David Silverstein, animated by Avi Ofer, the pleasure we experience in the repetition of language within poetry, and even in Eminem songs, is deciphered.
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Paradise Lost
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This music video for “White Flag,” a song from electronic music duo Delta Heavy’s album Paradise Lost, named after John Milton’s epic poem, features a video game themed retelling of the poem. In an interview in Kill Screen, director Najeeb Tarazi says of the video, “I wanted to try turning the myth of Paradise Lost on its head...”
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