This is sort of an offshoot from our cvilleMUSE Mix Tape series (which if you haven’t been following along, has been a real blast! Check em out!). Byard, one of our faithful MUSE readers, suggested this little idea in the midst of our last Mix Tape. So we’re going to give it a shot.
Instead of creating a mix of songs, let’s see if we can create a mix of poems. The rules are still the same. I’ll start with a YouTube posting to kick things off and then you guys chime in with your own poems. We’ll post on a first come, first serve basis. Again please try and include a video URL with your suggested poem. We’ll take the first 10 poems submitted. I don’t know if this is going to work or not, but here goes…
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We’ll simply call this one POETRY IN MOTION. Here’s my first choice:
1. Bluebird by Charles Bukowski (Shaun)
Bluebird by Charles Bukowski
2. Somebody Blew Up America by Amiri Baraka (byard)
Somebody Blew Up America by Amiri Baraka
3. The End of the Internet by Christian Bok (lividlunch)
The End of the Internet by Christian Bok
4. Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden (Elizabeth)
5. Yellow by Ken Nordine (mc)
Colours by Ken Nordine
6. For Jim by Michael McClure (accompanied by Ray Manzarek) (belmont yo)
For Jim by Michael McClure
7. A Word of Advice by MF Doom (echo)
A Word of Advice by MF Doom
8. The Love of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot (sweet)
The Love of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
9. Poema 20 by Pablo Neruda (five)
Poema 20 by Pablo Neruda
So who wants to give this a whirl? Submit your poems along with your video URLs and let’s see what happens.
Popularity: 55% [?]
Tagged as: 05/29, mix tape, poetry, Poetry in Motion
Some experiments succeed, others fail. Don’t know where this one is going to go. BTW–I’m going to be away for a few hours, so if I don’t respond back immediately…you know why. Apologies in advance.
Wow, that was quick! And SO much to possibly post.
I think I will choose Amiri Baraka and his poem “Somebody Blew Up America.” Although I don’t necessarily agree completely with his point of view, I believe that his poetry shows that even today poetry can be cutting edge and move people, get people thinking, even scare people. This particular poem got him into a lot of trouble after 911 because it suggests that western white decadence could have been responsible for the attacks. It can also be interpreted as rather anti-semitic. Like I said I don’t altogether agree with him (!), but I also think that one can take all his rethorical questions at face value and summarize them in the question: Why was 911 able to silence discourse in North America and Europe? Why were we not able to ask all these questions? It is definitely a moving poem. And really funny despite its seriousness. Also a great example for his way of incorporating sound and song into his readings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2bjSra0sYg
Can we have one of these where you can put poems without having to find a video? I like to read them, not listen to them.
That’s a good point Pinkie, especially since some of my favorites are not available on youtube. But I also really like readings. A lot of poetry gets me only when read out loud, especially when it’s the author. Even Robert Frost can give me goosebumps if he reads The Road Less Travelled By.
for my favorite contemporary poet, i couldn’t find a video on youtube i really liked (because of poor sound quality), except for this one, which is good except you can’t see his face:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zl1LLY7DBs
if you haven’t heard of Christian Bök, you should check out his book Eunoia. the concept of the book is that each chapter is a lipogram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipogram) which only uses one of the vowels - a, e, i, o, or u. it’s here on UbuWeb (a delightful archive in its own right) in MP3 form:
http://www.ubu.com/sound/bok.html
@pinkie: i feel your pain, but Bök is someone whom you must hear before you read. it’s a fantastic and unforgettable experience. if you absolutely can’t be bothered to listen, then you can read him here: http://www.ubu.com/contemp/bok/eunoia_final.html
agreed pinkie…this is simply an experiment to see what works and what works best.
ok…i’ll be posting vids soon. byard you’ve got #2 with Baraka’s “Somebody Blew Up America” and livid you’ve got #3 with Bok’s The End of the Internet. thanks guys. one other quick point: i too love to read but it is really nice to hear a work read by the author.
Funeral Blues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE9E07EznXw&feature=related
thanks Elizabeth. great choice and a great clip by which to express it! funeral blues by w.h. auden @4.
You may disqualify me and that’s alright because this isn’t exactly what you asked for, but I’ll share this from fun spokenwordsmith Ken Nordine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyLzXT1R3Fo
Josephina. I robbed a train. A cow train, in the rain. Now I have 18 hundred and 63 cows to feed. In the city, not pretty…Help me feed my cows!!
Gotta toss my hat in on this one with some Michael McClure insanity…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naGg0Kwms0w
This dude was my babysitter and his wife gave me my first cigarette (a Nat Sherman, with a gold filter tip!). Parents out there, remember, if you let beat poets babysit your kids for extended periods of time, you end up with freaks like me. You have been warned.
@10. I’ll include your Ken Nordine, maybe not poetry in some neatly defined sense, but words and animation…that’s poetry in motion to me.
@12. With that there is very little left to say…except I’d let beat poets babysit my kids. Mr. McClure it is. I like the addition of Manzarek as well. O Muse! O Me! Fantastic.
oops, should’ve done a better explanation. That is “Yellow” off the Ken Nordine album “Colors.”
Wow, I love the Ken Nordine one. I never heard of him. I think this is absolutely poetry. Reminds me of Ferlinghetti in a sense.
@14. I’ll make changes when the next poem is added. Thanks for the heads up!
@15. There was no way I couldn’t include it. Speaking of Ferlinghetti…I finally made my first pilgrimage to City Lights last fall. I know it’s a tourist trap phantom of its old self but I didn’t really care to be honest with you.
The colors series by Nordine is awesome, but his truly great bit is an album called “basic hip”, where he plays Geetz Romo, a hipster who is trying to teach a “square” to talk “hip”. Its a sample fest!
Also, if you are into outsider audio like this, may I suggest perusing “The 365 Days Project” which can be found here:
http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/index.shtml
Basically, a group of oddball record collectors post one weird as hell recording every day for a whole year. Its happened twice (03 and 07), so that’s 730 truly bizzaro bits of audio, truly amazing stuff. Highly recomended if you want the strangest ipod on the planet…
MF Doom “A Word of Advice”
Another offering…TS Eliot reading “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” with Portishead behind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXsItbsr4o0&feature=related
Go ahead, disturb the universe…
Thanks echo and sweet. I’ll add your submissions ASAP.
The Eliot reading with Portishead is super sweet!
[…] cvilleMUSE » Blog Archive » A Mixed Reading: The Poetry Series “Instead of creating a mix of songs, let’s see if we can create a mix of poems….We’ll take the first 10 poems submitted.” Get on over there — you can’t win if you don’t play! I’m at #4. […]
Although there’s a lot going on in the background, one of Pablo Neruda’s poems, “Poema 20″ has a couple great lines and is my choice.
The lines: “To hear the immense night,
Still more immense without her.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yanU4dFC7lU
Pablo Neruda has been added at #9.
Very nice. Cheers Shaun.
Right on for putting ol’ Henry Chinaski at the top of the list.
@26 Well hell yeah…it’s about time we had another Bukowski fan up in here!!! The first time I ever read Notes From a Dirty Old Man…my head damn near exploded. Alright squid, that’s two in a row. Townes Van Zandt and Charles Bukowski!!! Let me combine the two for you (if you haven’t you really need to check out this album!)
Hotwalker by Tom Russell. It’s amazing!!!!
From Wiki: In 2005 Russell released Hotwalker, the second part of a planned “Americana trilogy” (the first part being “The Man From God Knows Where”). It was another conceptual work largely inspired by his correspondence with author Charles Bukowski. Subtitled “A Ballad for Gone America”, the album features songs and spoken word pieces, many of the latter delivered by another friend of Bukowski, circus midget Little Jack Horton
Big Buk fan. I read Ham on Rye first and while it isn’t his most crazy one I was hooked. Didnt read ‘Women’ or ‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man’ till later - after I’d read a bunch of his poetry. I think I like his poetry better, but thats just me.
Tom Russell sounds interesting! I guess as long as we stick to the fringe stuff we’ll be ok Shaun. Just don’t get me started on local musicians whose heads are too big.
I’m still sort of getting over Utah Phillips passing away. I thought about him often for most of my life - but moreso lately - which I guess is weird since I only met him once. But he was such a part of my dad that I feel like he’s a part of me too. So many wonderful things have been written about him - the IWW has a really nice couple of articles on their main page.
[…] head on with another edition of our cvilleMUSE Mix Tape series. This, not counting our unfinished Poetry Mix, will be our third installment to date and will carry with it a sweltering theme. Hopefully you […]