So, apparently this is the pop-up book of the future — and while we’re not exactly sure that the future needs a special kind of pop-up book, we have to admit it’s pretty awesome. Between Page and Screen, an “augmented reality pop-up book” by Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse due to come out this spring in a limited run from Siglio Press, has printed symbols on every page that when held up to your webcam, spring up from the paper to become 3D poems. Poetry in three dimensions? Could get kind of interesting. Click through to watch the video, and let us know what you think in the comments.
Jim Clark’s animations resurrect legendary poets and literary figures from the past so we can enjoy readings of their famous works. The result is uncanny and somewhat hypnotizing — particularly when the animation appears to be totally seamless with the photographic image used. The sound of an old LP crackling and the scratchy film quality adds to the ambience. Light a few candles, and check out a few of our favorite readings past the break. Read More »
As you may have already heard, today the first Thursday in October, and is thus National Poetry Day. In celebration of this beloved writerly holiday, those of us over here in the film corner of your Flavorwire decided to post some of our favorite poems about our favorite subject: the movies. Join us after the jump for a few of our favorite cinematic poems, as suggested by the indispensible volume Lights, Camera, Poetry!(edited by Jason Shinder); feel free to add your own (or what the hell, make one up) after the jump.
Last week, the publishers of the annual Best New Poets anthology released the final lineup for their 2011 installment, chosen this year by guest editor D.A. Powell. The anthology will feature 50 new poems by 50 emerging poets, each chosen from a selection of work nominated by literary magazines and writing programs or submitted by the poets themselves. Eager for a whiff of our future poet laureate or literary game changer, we sifted through the internet for work by the talented poets to get ourselves a sneak peek of what we can expect from Best New Poets 2011. While we liked almost everything we found, we did hit upon ten poets whose work we particularly loved, whom we will now deem, based on our own subjective tastes, of course, the Best of the Best New Poets of 2011. Click through to check out our picks, but don’t be shy — there are 40 more poets whose work is just waiting to be explored.
Congratulations to Philip Levine, who was named America’s newest poet laureate this morning. The 83-year-old writer is a professor emeritus in the English Department at California State University, Fresno and has published 20 collections of poems, along with several non-fiction books. Levine has also been the recipient of countless honors, including a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
“Philip Levine is one of America’s great narrative poets,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington in this morning’s announcement. “His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling ‘The Simple Truth’—about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.” But don’t just take his word for it. You can get to know Levine yourself by perusing his lengthy, vintage Paris Review interview and reading (or listening him read) a selection of his poems. His newest book, which was published in 2009, is News of the World.
According to Jacket Copy, filmmaker Ethan Coen, one half of the cult brotherly team that brought us great films like “No Country For Old Men,” “The Big Lebowski,” and “True Grit,” among others, is coming out with a new book of poetry, to be published by Crown in the spring of 2012. Which, in case you’ve forgotten, would see the book, entitled “The Day The World Ends,” printed just in time to get a couple readers before the Mayan-predicted end of the world. How very Coen-esque.
“The Day The World Ends” will be Coen’s second book of poetry – the first, entitled “The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way,” was published in 2009. He is also the author of a book of short stories, entitled “Gates of Eden.”
Since there was a dearth of poets from the Midwest and South in our last poetry post, we’d like to like to call attention to ten emerging poets from this giant swath of land who are deserving of our attention — some of whom you mentioned in the previous comments section. See? We do listen. Jennifer Karmin extolled the virtues of living as a poet in the Midwest in an e-mail: “In a nutshell [it has] cheap rent, great teaching opportunities, and amazing creative community.” If you’re interested in more established poets (like Ohio’s own Rita Dove), you might want to pick up Crossing State Lines: An American Renga, which was recently published by FSG. Or, if you’re interested in some poetic justice, the Oxford American wrote about contemporary Afro-Mississippian poets a few years back. If nothing else, we suggest you read Keno Davis’s “Hea’m (Heaven),” which features one of our favorite lines in modern poetry: “I wonder if there’s a Hooters in Heaven ‘cause I’m gonna need something to do on Monday nights.” As always, if there’s anyone we missed, please bring it to our attention in the comments section below. Read More »
Our friends at Slate’s Browbeat blog point us to an amazing find: a childhood poem by David Foster Wallace. It’s an odd, melancholy, little piece about his hard-working mom, with an antiquated feel (“My moth-/er Works So hard/So hard and for bread she needs some lard”). Writer Justine Tal Goldberg stumbled upon the handwritten poem while researching an article in Wallace’s archives at the University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center. See the poem after the jump, click over to Goldberg’s post for her perceptive analysis, and if you’re longing to read more of DFW’s mature work, don’t forget that his posthumous novel The Pale Kingcomes out tomorrow.
“I didn’t realize that you wrote such bloody awful poetry,” sang Morrissey in 1987. And indeed, the history of musicians with poetic aspirations is a long and patchy one. This year has already seen the publication of a couple of collections of poetry by famous musicians – we recently got hold of a copy of System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian’s book Glaring Through Oblivion, and Tom Waits has just published a collaboration with photographer Michael O’Brien called Hard Ground. Writing lyrics is a very different skill to writing effective poems, and the two disciplines rarely coincide. With this in mind, here’s a look at the best and the worst of musicians in poetry – starting with five whose work really should have stayed in their notebooks.
Welcome to Conversation Pieces, where Flavorpill curates five articles from the past week that you should read. Some are long, others are short. Some are from major publications, others aren’t. The only thing all these articles have in common is that they’re interesting. This week, we discuss the strangeness of William Shatner, the philosophical importance of lost laundry, the current state of poetry, Canada’s willingness to let drug addicts have their fix, and more. After the jump, find something exciting to discuss this weekend in the home, at the bar, or on the street.
