Candlelight Stories » Poetry

Jean Cocteau – Lies and Truths: 1996 French Documentary

Alessandro Cima — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:41:16 +0000

This is a 1996 documentary by Noël Simsolo, featuring many interviews with Jean Cocteau himself, Jean-Luc Godard and actor Jean Marais. The great French director of films like ‘Blood of a Poet,’ ‘Orpheus,’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ was also an essayist, poet, artist, and playwright. When I was a kid I read the book he wrote about filming ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ I understood little of it except that there was the general impression of someone working against constant hardship to attain a mysterious something. The book detailed his struggles with the subtleties of light, weather and performance in the pursuit of a mysterious quality that must be present in the fairytale. I knew that his efforts had worked because I had seen the film on television and understood that it was simply the most convincing fairytale I had ever seen. Another film with this totally mysterious quality is ‘Orpheus,’ which is Cocteau’s modern version of the Greek myth in which the great musician/poet descends into the underworld to bring his wife back to the world of the living. Cocteau’s telling of the tale is at once ancient and modern, always mysterious and always trying to get close to poetry. Whenever I see that film I feel that I am seeing an important picture of French artistic life in the late 1940s told through the prism of ancient Greek myth. The film sits in that fascinating period of artistic ferment and dawning of a new cinematic movement that was a reaction to the end of World War II. Possibilities in films of that period seem limitless. There is a calmness of the image, an almost casual approach to creating scenes. Things are becoming more fluid and less studio-bound. Films are beginning to lean toward poetry and art.

Even though I never really understood what was being said in the ‘Orpheus’ film, it is probably one of the most important influences on the little bits of work that I do in film and video. Various images and scenes from ‘Orpheus’ regularly pop into my head as I work.

One of the best things I think an artist can learn from looking at Jean Cocteau is to follow one’s own interests without worrying about being unqualified – pretending can eventually get you where you want to go if you do it absolutely.

The Mad Ones: A Brief History of the Beat Generation

Alessandro Cima — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:31:08 +0000

Krystal Cannon (PersonTV) made this short documentary about the Beat Generation in which she not only narrates as Queen Elizabeth, but also plays various roles including Allen Ginsberg, Joan Vollmer, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, John Lennon, Edie Sedgwick and Abbie Hoffman. She gives a clear account of the Beat movement then moves into the general social reaction. She also makes some very interesting points about how women were sidelined even though many of them made great contributions to Beat culture. I think that what the Beats were working on is in very fine hands indeed with Ms. Cannon at work.

Thanks to Marc Campbell at Dangerous Minds.

Poet Richard Brautigan Reading Aloud

Alessandro Cima — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:37:51 +0000

Richard Brautigan was one of America’s best poets. Here he is reading poems from his collection called The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster.

I found this via Marc Campbell at Dangerous Minds. He has some fascinating posts about how this poet was a major influence on his own life and work.

The Art of Drowning – Poem by Billy Collins

Alessandro Cima — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 03:11:24 +0000

Diego Maclean animated this film which is narrated by the poet Billy Collins.

Manhatta 1921

Alessandro Cima — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 20:51:36 +0000

This silent film, with assorted words of Walt Whitman, was photographed by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler.

Poetry: Azeem

Editor — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:35:50 +0000

It’s National Poetry Month and here is my favorite poet of the month. Azeem. We see a lot of writing about cute poets with education credentials and then someone like this brilliant Azeem fellow comes along and says a few things into a camera and reminds everybody that poets can shoot word bullets. I watch this video and my heart starts pumping and I get fidgety and I want to leave my chair and get to know words as well as this guy knows them. I noticed Azeem because he is one of the few subscribers to my YouTube film channel and so I checked him out. I’m extremely impressed. You want people to be interested in poetry? Show them this guy and they’ll be interested in about 5 seconds flat. I think what makes most poets uninteresting to the American reading public is that they all secretly have an image of a bookshelf in mind. Bookshelves are fine if you are browsing for a book, but they are death for anyone who’s making something. Azeem is also working with some hugely talented filmmakers who make fantastic imagery and do it with ease. If he comes to Los Angeles, I want to know about it and go see him play.

Set a Blaze:

LYRICS:
*(Chorus)
Stop. I pocket Arms
Songs are Bullets
This is Passion
The Apostle
Sweat a Page
And Make it Sing
A Sweet Soliloquies

Take 10 Paces
Or get Blasted By the Magic
I Box with The Light Of the Sun
Im Young Cassius

Catch Epilepsy
To your lyrics
Most likely fall
Asleep twice
Before the First Chorus
Falls slightly
Off the Beat
Like a stripper with a limp
Might be
On a stage that Inclines
to the right just slightly

Noddin Like I got a
Heroin Problem
I Rhyme Tightly.

Death Card Mystic
A Mic Viking.

I shoot the Sheriff
But Im Here For
His Wifey
Vampire Years
You Ngs
Couldnt Out Write me

Huh?
I Bring You Back To Life
Yappin Bout The After Life
How you seen the Light
Stopped Rappin
Now you actin right.

Fucka.
Ill Kill you twice
And Never Have to Fight
Pass The Mic
My rhymes Have
Double Meanings
Like Hermaphrodites

*(Chorus)

Spit with a purpose
Makin rap critics nervous
So Much Hashish
You Think me and my peoples
Is Turkish

Verbs so Fly
I could chirp 3 verses
I rap like a mummy
Wearing 29 Turbans

They Yap and Blabber
I capture what they
Cant imagine
Im carvin wind and
Fathering a Modern Thought Palace

Foot on a dragon
Will these amateurs
Never learn?
Babylon Has always been brick
It wont burn.

To War and back
And aint no
Prisoners coming

Im a Time Bomb
Fantasizing of
Beautiful Thunder.

Self Destruct.
I Still Wont Fail
I keep a Straw Shack In Heaven
And a Mansion In Hell

*(Chorus)

Dancin till my eyes light up
Like I was Smokin on some
Tiger Tranquilizer
But I Rise Right Up

On Fire.
My songs cause a riot
For real
My records come with
Yellow Helmets and
Vicodan Pills

I set a Blaze to Jack Danger
Made Music
Got me Drooling lyrics
Heavy as Muthafucin Buicks

We Use the
Tip of the Tounge
The Teeth The Lips..E.T.C.
STOP!

I’m Gonna Beat You With My Poem

Editor — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 04:03:03 +0000

I’m about to show you why I have so few friends. It’s because I don’t put up with ‘team mentality.’ Hey kids, come over here and join my poetry team! Yeah dudes! Get with it! Get hip to my dang poetry team, bro! We could win! We could take the whole prize, sista! Yeah, baaaaaaby!

I’m the kid eating the Twinkies, picking my nose, twirling the Frisbee on my finger and looking at you like you’ve got a gun. That’s me. You scare me, poetry dude.

For some reason, in our young national culture, we enjoy teaching our children to compete via talent shows of all stripes. Since it’s National Poetry Month, the Louder Than a Bomb demo video caught my somewhat jaundiced eye. I put up with it all the way through even though it made me squirm. Poetry as in your face talent competition doesn’t fit my world view.

Right away the video starts out with total obnoxiousness. The guy says, ‘We de-emphasize the competition, but you want to win!’ A-hole. What an idiot. Kids, remember, always run from a guy that says something like that. Run and don’t look back.

I feel the same way about film festivals, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and the Academy Awards. I even feel the same way about online writing contests, though I’ve hosted them myself. They are intended to boost traffic on a web site. They serve no real purpose and offer no true value at all. Contests are held to make mediocrities feel like they can hand out prizes. A kid who is going to be a poet is going to leave by the back door every time.

Animation: Khabrahol (From Russia’s Toonbox Studio)

Editor — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:37:13 +0000

From Russian animation studio Toonbox comes this marvelous animation based on a poem by Sasha Svirsky. I don’t understand a word of it but I love the sound of it. I really must find the woman who does the voice-over. She is just magnificent and totally fearless. The drawings are fascinating. The rhythm is catchy. Toonbox does so many of the best animations that I see. They seem to balance their commercial projects with artistic ones very well.

Via Cold Hard Flash

Film: Typography

Editor — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:05:11 +0000

In Ronnie Bruce’s short film Typography, poet Taylor Mali lets it all hang out about how people talk today. Hipsters. Kids. Cooliodoolios who don’t want to sound too committal about anything. Every utterance is just a little fart with a question mark at the end. ‘You know?’

I don’t happen to have this problem with sounding non-committal and all like you know laid back. I get in trouble because I talk too much like a guy who’s swinging a baseball bat. But, uh, you know, in an era of fake Bush wars and a ‘liberal’ president who tells me I’m going to have to buy insurance from a murderous private company or else… well, hmmm, like, dude, I’m swingin’ my verbal bat just as hard as I want and I’m hoping to hit someone in authority. The Tea Party folks are idiots, but there’s one thing they’ve got right. Obama is so over, he’s, like, you know… done. Obama reminds me of a school principal. Never says anything worth listening to. He’s got the dullest eyes I’ve ever seen on a president. Notice that? Blank. Even Bush had expression. Always terror. Sheer stark raving terror radiated out of Bush’s little monkey eyes. Obama radiates the pause between pre-planned comments – the ‘umm’ moment.

Of course, when people suddenly get very clear, direct, self-assured and forceful in their statements you know what happens, right? You get Hitler.

Poetry Is? It’s a Stupid Question, That’s What.

Editor — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:48:23 +0000

In my poetic web adventures I went and found this big long movie by George Quasha about poets trying to tell everybody what poetry is. What is poetry? It’s not an unanswerable question. It’s a stupid question. But these poets do try to answer it. It’s a rather long movie and I always look for a bad guy in every movie. Without a bad guy, a movie just makes me hungry and I get up to go to the bathroom a lot. These poets are all so nice and content looking. So friendly and comfortable. I can’t find out which one is the bad one. Someone once asked me a really stupid question and I ran away with his camera and threw it in the river. Why aren’t any of these poets nasty and depressed? What makes them so pleasant? They all sound like their favorite piece of furniture is a podium.

Here’s a guy who if you ask him what poetry is will very likely give you a good reason to never ask that question again:

Get what I mean?