Set to audio of the author himself, the animation plays out the story of why you shouldn’t leave matches out in this certain house in the country…

I like how the animation was done in this one, little touches like the fire blazing a dance in the eye of the mouse really brings the spirit of the poem to life.

What strikes me about the poem itself is how I’m left wondering exactly who this person with the pyro-mice story is. Did they tell Collins the story as a joke or were they someone kind of crazy who actually believed that mice would snatch matches and torch the house?

I lean more towards the person being a little mentally unsound, mostly based on the title ‘The Country’.

As in maybe the person lived in the country too long and the isolation affected them negatively. Seperated from neighbors and friends by the great distance and with nobody to talk to over the years their mind got twisted by the sound of mice scratching in the walls that echoed through the empty house.

Well that’s my theory anyway, what do you think?

MASKS

She had blue skin,
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by—
And never knew.

Published after Silverstein’s death in a collection called Every Thing On It this poem stands out to me because it uses simple language and storytelling to address a complex problem that affects young and old alike.

Whether you’re a kid in grade school or an office worker about to hit retirement, chances are you struggle at least occasionally with your own personal version of ‘blue skin’.

Usually blackout poems are done using old newspapers but this one seems to be done with a page out of a book, quite fitting considering what the poem is saying.

I wonder what book this page came from…and if the story had a happy ending.

Wasn’t sure what to expect from this one when I saw that it was a nine minute beat poem.

Yes it is an animated poem and I tend to love those but on the other hand I’ve heard a lot of beat poetry that …how can I say this… makes me want to claw at my ears, so I kind of braced myself when I pushed the play button lol.

Storm turned out to be excellent though, both the poem itself as well as the animation.

Written by Tim Minchin it tells the story of how he went to a dinner party one night and was confronted with someone so outrageously ignorant that try as he might he couldn’t stop himself from calling her out, even though it would make the whole dinner party incredibly awkward…

A spectacular Carl Sagan video was passed on a while back by Gunthar via the Facebook page for this blog.

The video was made by someone who was frustrated with how badly NASA is doing at telling it’s story, which interestingly enough is exactly the same situation that lead Sagan and some others to make the Cosmos tv series so many years ago.

The foundation of the video is Carl Sagan reading from his beautifully written book The Pale Blue Dot. As usual he was through words trying to rouse people into the same love and adventurous spirit that he felt for space exploration.

I think that the person who made this video did an excellent job of translating Sagan’s poetic words into just the right images. I love the subtleties, like the tree with it’s array of limbs shown during the part where Sagan is saying ‘Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the solar system and beyond, will be unified.’.

Anyway check it out, I think you’ll be inspired:

“Not all those who wander are lost” this saying has a pretty interesting story behind it. It’s a line from a poem JRR Tolkien wrote into The Fellowship Of The Ring that talks about how Aragorn is in a strange situation because of how he looks:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king

Because Aragorn wanders the wilderness most of the time he has a sort of wild and shady look about him that causes people to shun him. When he goes into the towns of the areas he wanders the people there judge him at face value and treat him like he’s a career criminal even though they don’t know anything about who he is or what he does.

Yet in reality he’s actually the leader of a group of men that for years have been patrolling the land and protecting those same townspeople by battling it out with the nasty evil creatures trying to destroy their way of life.

And even beyond that Aragorn is actually a king …and well you know the rest of that story I bet :).

I love this :)

“What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.

In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink-blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspout outside your grandparents’ window long ago. Be dandelion wine in the ketchup bottle capped and placed with an inked inscription:

June morn, first day of Summer, 1923. Summer 1926, Fireworks Night. 1927: Last Day of Summer. LAST OF THE DANDELIONS, Oct. 1st”

-Ray Bradbury Zen In The Art Of Writing

April is National Poetry Month so I thought I’d share one of my favorite poetry-related things, it’s an animation of the poem Forgetfulness by Billy Collins.

I love this video and I think the animator(s) did an excellent job of visualizing the poem in a way that complements it rather than just lays pictures over the top of the words.

The flickering and non-centralized style of the animation really brings home the feeling of searching and nostalgia for all those lost memories. While watching it I can’t help but to wonder what moments and days of my life have gone out of memory as quick as the snapping of fingers or which ones might be silently fading into the background.

Like last night as I was lying in bed in that stage where you can still think but you slip in and out of some kind of light dreaming I was thinking of a day in Fairbanks when a friend and I were out walking in the sun smoking cigars to celebrate the birth of his first child, a daughter.

As I was retracing that walk it just seemed so distant and hazy, eventually I thought did this really happen or is my sleepy mind drifting and making up this story? It was weird, I felt like it was real but I lay there not quite 100% sure about it.

Today now that I’m fully awake I know that yes it did really happen, but even now that memory seems hazy and dreamlike. I have a feeling the memory of that walk is trying it’s best to sneak out of my consciousness, but why? Forgetfulness is a mysterious thing.

Forgetfulness

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 goodbye
and watched the quadratic 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 the 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.