Does the video enhance your experience of the poem? Does it distract you from your own images in the poem? Please respond to these questions and the poem in general in 2-4 sentences.
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses good-bye
and watched the quadractic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up a date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Forgetfulness - Billy Collins Animated Poetry
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
I found the video to be somewhat ironic. It seemed strange to me that a poem about forgetting, would be given life through images. The poem talked about almost being able to see or hear what you want to remember so to make a video about it felt a little off. I also found the movie distracting and it took away from what I envisioned the poem to mean.
I wish that I had read the poem prior to watching the video. It did distract me, and I can't as many ideas as I would have from simply reading it. However, because of some of the picture, certain lines stick in my head. Yet it feels kind of weird to think back and reflect on this poem because I almost feel like I didn't really experience it, but merely skimmed over it.
I really liked being able to watch the video and listen to the poem at the same time. Usually, it takes a while to actually understand the poem because I become distracted by other things. Watching the video allowed me to: 1. see the poem through someone else's eyes, and 2. Focus more on the message of the poem, thus getting a better understanding of it.
The poem was very trippy and eyeopening with the video. Sometimes the pictures didint match up to the words exactly so you had to abstractly think about what he is saying. He made lots of good points on how we forget things and they totally leave our memory. The video enhanced my understanding.
I think the movie was like a mirror because that is how we feel when we forget something. I liked the poem because it shows a simple thing that the person forgets, but does not remember it. This shows how humans can forget things so easily but at the same time be able to do other complex tasks. This poem shows how people have mind lapses and I had one while watching it.
THE END
My god i hated that stupid animation thing so very much; that vidio crushes any form of chance for spontanious emotion which is what we define poetry as. Im so busy trying to figure out what emotion hes trying to show through the animation, that i cant find any myself. And while my hate may seem to be in response to the [poem it is not but infact in response to the fact he crushes a perfictly good peice of poetry. By reading the poem seperatly I found the spontanious emotions, that the vidio did not give me at all.
I didn't necessarily find the video part of it helpful because I can relate pretty well to the process of what one forgets over time. I liked being able to listen the poem because it makes it easier being able to hear it all in one sitting without any repetition at all. The one thing that I feel differently about than the video did, was that it illustrated that the memories were completely gone. I find that I am only able to recall certain parts of most of the memories that I have.
Looking at the pictures in the video and trying to understand the meaning of the poem was hard for me. The video did not seem to help me understand the poem because it just had little scenes of what the poem was saying. So if they mentioned a bicycle there would be a short scene showing a bicycle. For the most part, the pictures and short clips used in the video were not there to help the reader to see a more abstract meaning but were there to directly show the reader the objects he is talking about.
The video was useful for my understanding until about halfway through the poem. The images of things being forgotten and earased were very useful and fit wonderfully with the poem; however, after about midway, I was still only seeing the images dissapear. I lost the actual meaning of the rest (I think I phyiscally stopped listening) and became just intriuged by the images flashing on and off screen.
Personally seeing this video did not enchance my experience of the poem. Only when I actually read the poem did I get a better grasp of its meaning and point. I think that the clip was interesting because we were able to see the poem better through the eyes of the author but sometimes I think it is meant for the meaning of something to be left up to the reader.
I think the video showed us a mirror reflection of a common normal feeling all humans have when they forget something. They do not intend to be forgetful but some times the brain gets tangled up and can not think of a common answer right away. I liked this poem because I sometimes feel like that during poetry in class.
The video made it easier for me to understand the poem's message because everything was so illustrated. On the other hand I didnt like the illustrations that went along with the poem because it didn't leave room for one's own interpretations. The speaker distracted me from the poem's actual words (because of the monotony) and I had to go back and read the poem without the video.
I really liked both poems. But for the first one I would have liked to have read it first just to see the impression's that it would have one me. I liked the video, but i like more to imagine, because the book is always better than the movie. For the last poem I did not like the smoking with drugged, it poisoned my view. But I like the last one better since it was less realistic and made you think a little.
Post a Comment