Naomi Shihab Nye
It may be Ocho de Mayo, but it's not too late to watch Naomi Shihab Nye read her poem "Cinco de Mayo" (from Transfer, published by BOA Editions last year) for PBS NewHour's Weekly Poem.
A curated selection of videos, including book trailers, brief interviews, and other literary curiosities updated daily.
Thoreau and the Lightning
This month's selection from Motionpoems is Adam Tow's visual interpretation of David Wagoner's poem "Thoreau and the Lightning," from the collection After the Point of No Return (Copper Canyon Press, 2011).
Thu, 05/03/2012 - 20:00
Patrick Somerville
The trailer for Patrick Somerville's second novel, This Bright River, forthcoming in late June from Regan Arthur Books, will likely strike a chord with anyone who grew up in the pre-Internet age playing text adventures such as Zork (which also factors into the back story of one of the new novel's main characters, Ben Hanson). "I hoped that the 'user'—as well as the viewer—would be a little creeped out, but also intrigued," Somerville says. Mission accomplished.
Joyce Maynard
"Having been much criticized for lots of things I've talked about actually is a very liberating thing," says Joyce Maynard in this clip from Open Road Media. Maynard is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including her bestselling memoir, At Home in the World, in which she revealed her relationship with J. D. Salinger when he was fifty-three and she was eighteen.
Ophelia's Skull
This work by Owen W. Lee is part of a project that aims to recode Shakespeare from a contemporary perspective. The skull represents a well-known tragic character, Ophelia in Hamlet, who is often used as a symbol of tragic death.
Cosmopolis
What happens when you mix equal parts Don DeLillo and David Cronenberg, add an estimated budget of more than twenty million dollars, and stir vigorously? Cosmopolis, based on the 2003 novel and starring Robert Pattinson, Jay Baruchel, and Paul Giamatti, is an official selection at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.
Dear Frank
In this endearing short film by student Juliet San Nicolas, five lines of poetry by Frank O'Hara are intermingled with the sweeet sound of a typewriter and the song "Annie Green Quit Speaking to Me" by Jeff Pianki.
Shakespeare and Company
If this simple, evocative video shot at Shakespeare and Company in Paris and set to Melody Gardot's "Over the Rainbow" doesn't give you an almost irresistable urge to visit an independent bookstore today, you've probably been buying all your books online.
This Is Not a Sales Pitch
A collaboration between artist Vanessa Hodgkinson and poet Marianne Morris, this video poem combines clips from a shoot at Leighton House Museum in London, where the artist recreates Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres's "The Turkish Bath," and footage from a British documentary on the storming of the Iranian embassy in the early 1980s as well as YouTube videos of more recent activities at the embassy in London.
Nathalie Handal
Linda Källérus directed this video for the poem "Waltz of a Dream," from Nathalie Handal's latest collection Poet in Andalucia, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in January. The music is from "Take This Waltz" by Leonard Cohen.