Anthology of Thirties Prose. Light came and went and came again, the booming strokes of three o'clock beat out across the town in thronging bronze from the courthouse bell, light winds of April blew the fountain out in rainbow sheets, until the plume returned and pulsed, as Grover turned into the Square.
He was a child, dark-eyed and grave, birthmarked upon his neck-- a berry of warm brown-and with a gentle face, too quiet and too listening for his years. Bukowski's "The Blue Bird," Beautifully Animated. By Maria Popova Visual whimsy to make Bukowski’s magic shine.
Charles Bukowski’s poem “The Bluebird,” originally published in his 1992 anthology The Last Night of the Earth Poems, is a quietly profound meditation on an all too familiar facet of the human condition — our compulsion to conceal and stifle our most tender and vulnerable selves underneath tough, controlled, meticulously architected exteriors. This mesmerizingly beautiful animated adaptation of the poem by Cambridge School of Art student Monika Umba is the perfect piece of visual whimsy to bring to life Bukowski’s magic. Donating = Loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount: Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. Share on Tumblr. Tim Cumming: Poetry In Motion. In the cultural pecking order, film and poetry sit at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Film is probably the world's most popular art form, drawing the biggest audiences. Poetry, on the other hand, almost certainly draws the smallest. So what kind of fusion happens when you put them together? As a poet and filmmaker, I believe that film - compressed and finely cut with angles, close-ups, pans, dollies - is closer to poetry than to the linear narratives of fiction. Poetry's arsenal of metaphor, simile, symbol, rhythmic and rhyming pulses are all parallel to the core language of film - an arsenal of special effects which opens like a fan in the hands of a master. While televising contemporary poetry films is a fitful phenomenon at best, there have been some notable successes. My own adventures in poetry and film came in the wake of a BBC documentary I made in 2007 about the space rock band Hawkwind. Crying Flower (Emotional Poem) Another poem from my teenage years this one was something at the time that held a lot of meaning for me.
I spent a lot of time during those years dealing with teenage angst, feeling things to the limit and my emotions were very tied in knots at the time. In those days I wouldn't have even dreamed of being so open and sharing this poem with anyone but these days I am fine with it. So much has happened and life has moved far beyond what it was in this freeze frame of time. This one runs more like a song than a true poem but you be the judge and let me know what you think of it. Flutter petals in the sky Crying flowers, tear to eye When I see away you wilt Shimmering now white is spilt Greying slowly float away Why'd you tell me, here today Wounded angel your not mine Save yourself leave me behind Remember.... Space the cold and lifeless void Here on earth we can't avoid Imperfect solutions, imperfect me Need some time just let me be Thinking, blooming in your youth.
Or,, Robyn Creswell. Thomas Sayers Ellis.
Most of the poems stuck in my head are rap songs. Rap is the music I grew up listening to, and the lyrics from those days, the late eighties and early nineties, have stayed with me. I’ve forgotten most of the poems I had to memorize at school; of Keats’s “To Autumn,” I remember only the famous lines. On the other hand, Big Daddy Kane’s “Smooth Operator,” Rakim’s “Mahogany,” or Nas’s “N.Y. State of Mind”—these are poems I know by heart, from beginning to end, and will probably never forget. Some people don’t believe raps are poems. There is no doubt that Thomas Sayers Ellis’s “Or,” is a poem, but it is one of the few that feels to me like a rap—an especially good one.
Or Oreo, or worse. “Or,” first appeared in the October 2006 issue of Poetry magazine.