{"id":385,"date":"2011-05-27T11:33:35","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T15:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=385"},"modified":"2012-07-15T20:12:33","modified_gmt":"2012-07-16T00:12:33","slug":"motionpoems-catchy-enough-to-catch-on-in-our-poetry-wary-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/motionpoems-catchy-enough-to-catch-on-in-our-poetry-wary-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Motionpoems: Catchy Enough to Catch on in Our Poetry Wary Culture?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/22177395\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/22177395\">RENDER, RENDER a poem by Thomas Lux<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/motionpoems\">Motionpoems<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Angella and Todd are poetry lovers in an age of rampant poetry-phobia. They are the innovators behind \u201cMotionpoems,\u201d a fusion of poetry and film that they hope will \u201cbroaden the audience for poetry by turning great poems into short films.\u201d Except for a minor population, it seems that people no longer casually pick up a literary magazine to catch up on the latest poetry, and people certainly aren\u2019t attending poetry readings in the swarms that they once did, as in 1956 when T.S. Eliot attracted\u00a013,700 people to a basketball stadium in Minneapolis. But with Angella and Todd\u2019s idea, Motionpoems may harbor the potential for poetry to take new life in the contemporary media-overwhelmed world through the b\u00eate-noire of poetry itself: technology.<\/p>\n<p>Motionpoems have gained substantial attention from poets, publishers, teachers, and adorers of poetry alike. They have been shown at film festivals around the world and been featured in online textbooks, setting an ingenious precedent for the way students interact with poetry in the modern era. And in a very exciting partnership, this year Angella and Todd will produce 12-15 motionpoems for Scribner&#8217;s 2011 <em>Best American Poetry<\/em> anthology.<\/p>\n<p>The project suggests an interesting transition point in the poetry and publishing worlds, the latter of which is undergoing a vast shift from traditional paper publishing to digital formats. Todd appropriately acknowledges the way in which Motionpoems possess the potential to revitalize poetry, an art form that is not given enough credence in today\u2019s culture: \u201cSuddenly it&#8217;s not just a poem in a literary journal anymore. It&#8217;s something that you can share and that people can kind of get absorbed in a totally new way.\u201d People are attending the Motionpoem viewings with \u201cthe same set of expectations that they bring to movie-going.\u201d Thomas Lux, a poet with three\u00a0National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship, lauds the project for its revolutionary capabilities: \u201cOf all the new ways people are trying to disseminate the art form of poetry, I think Motionpoems is one of the most original and the one to appeal most to younger people, and that&#8217;s important: among them are the poets of the future, and among them are the readers of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As we now experience films, television, and music from our computers, it makes a lot of sense that we could now experience virtual poetry readings too. For Todd and others, \u201cIt feels like the work has been honored in a totally radically different way than you could have ever done just by reading it in front of an audience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/375616979\/poems-on-the-big-screen-motionpoems\" target=\"_blank\">Learn more about Angella and Todd\u2019s creative endeavors<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; RENDER, RENDER a poem by Thomas Lux from Motionpoems on Vimeo. Angella and Todd are poetry lovers in an age of rampant poetry-phobia. They are the innovators behind \u201cMotionpoems,\u201d a fusion of poetry and film that they hope will \u201cbroaden the audience for poetry by turning great poems into short films.\u201d Except for a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,219,199],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":81,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3292,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/3292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}