Comments on: This is the YouTube poetry post.

This is the YouTube poetry post.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:31:13 -0800

Poets on YouTube: Bukowski; Dylan Thomas; Jim Morrison; Allen Ginsberg; Sylvia Plath; Billy Collins; Cookie Monster; and what the hell, even Jacques Brel.

But there's plenty of readings by amateurs as well: for example, lilcutiewithabooty06 reads e e cummings; Michael reads cummings really fast; Tom Waits and Bono read Bukowski; bearded men read Lewis Carroll and Shakespeare; and what if Emily Dickinson had a ukulele?

Mouseover links to see titles; feel free to add your favourites.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:31:50 -0800

Oh, and mouse-over for titles.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:40:47 -0800

And darn it, I had a good Joseph Brodsky one as well but it was deleted while I was editing the post, grr. So have this one instead (click the video link top right). It's from right at the end of a three hour show, so if it doesn't skip to the right position it starts at 2 hrs, 57 mins, 20 seconds.

By: roll truck roll

roll truck roll — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:51:25 -0800

Woohoo! I'll probably add more to the list later, but for now, here's my good friend Ken Arkind.

By: otio

otio — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:51:42 -0800

Willem Defoe reads the last section of Eliot's "Little Gidding" (?!?!?) Brando reads "The Hollow Men" Dude sings Yeats's "Down by the Salley Gardens"

By: MrMoonPie

MrMoonPie — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:53:30 -0800

Performing Dickinson on ukulele is, apparently, quite popular. Just about any song or poem in common meter can be sung to the tune of "Yellow Rose of Texas," "Gilligan's Island," "Amazing Grace," or, my favorite, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing." I like to annoy my mom by singing "Amazing Grace" to the tune of "Yellow Rose of Texas."

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:55:37 -0800

A performance by The Four Horsemen a.k.a. bp Nichol, Steve McCaffery, Paul Dutton and Rafael Barreto-Rivera.

By: otio

otio — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:58:39 -0800

Philip Larkin - The Lost Tapes

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:05:36 -0800

Dammit, I was only going to post the one, but here's almost four minutes of Paul Muldoon. He's so much better recited than read, I find. And it's not just the Armagh brogue. Oh hell, here's another one, Paul Muldoon reading and explaining The Sightseers.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:19:50 -0800

(Thanks jessamyn for restoring the DHTML titles in the post)

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:21:11 -0800

MrMoonPie, I now have an earworm of "Amazing Grace" to the tune of "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island." Thanks a lot, you bastard.

By: Turtles all the way down

Turtles all the way down — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:29:43 -0800

Great post--it motivated me to search for a recording of Eliot reading Prufrock that I used to listen to on vinyl when I escaped to the listening library as an undergraduate. And I can't believe I found it. (YouTube video with added visuals but from what I can tell the original recording.)

By: ontic

ontic — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:29:58 -0800

Thanks for the link to Jacques Brel. I had no idea you could get videos of his performances on YouTube.

By: Turtles all the way down

Turtles all the way down — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:33:17 -0800

And, I've just discovered, with some NSFW still images.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:34:50 -0800

Did I forget to say thanks for the post, goodnewsfortheinsane? I believe I did forget! Thanks for the post, goodnewsfortheinsane. Just lilcutiewithabooty06 reading i carry your heart with me(i carry it in alone went a long ways towards restoring my faith in humanity.

By: kid ichorous

kid ichorous — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:05:23 -0800

Christopher Walken reads Poe's "The Raven."

By: YoBananaBoy

YoBananaBoy — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:18:28 -0800

Philip Levine reading "What Work Is" with a video montage.

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:31:33 -0800

Why do I prefer Cookie Monster? Is this overwhelming nostalgia or a symptom of arrested development? Should I be posting in AskMe?

By: drjimmy11

drjimmy11 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:47:23 -0800

Wow, that's a lot of poets. And Jim Morrison, too! (I keed. Cool links.)

By: homodigitalis

homodigitalis — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:49:59 -0800

The Cookie Monster rulez!

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:21:03 -0800

No Christopher Walken reading James Kirkup?

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:28:53 -0800

Thanks for the link to Jacques Brel. I had no idea you could get videos of his performances on YouTube. That's the problem with YouTube for me. I wouldn't even think of looking for Brel on YT until I saw a clip of Ne Me Quitte Pas on a chat show this evening, with a guest remarking how he thought the one where Brel was covered in sweat (the one linked here) better. In fact, that's how I rolled into researching this very post (Brel -> YouTube -> "Hey, Bukowski!" -> poetry in general). Most of YouTube's gems are hidden until you know what to look for.

By: saraswati

saraswati — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:35:35 -0800

Wow, that's a lot of poets. And Jim Morrison, too! I'm not a big fan of his poetry but the the video in the post is actually really cool. It makes you wonder what some of these people would've done with a medium like YouTube.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:43:44 -0800

Here's Sebő ensemble with their surprisingly cheerful, folk-like rendering of Attila József's A Hetedik (The Seventh One). Both of these translations are lousy. And here's Zoltán Latinovits giving a great reading of József's Eszmélet (Consciousness).

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:11:46 -0800

what the hell, even [Ne Me Quitte Pas]?!?!? In Ubustan, you would be flayed alive for that kind of blasphemy.

By: WaterSprite

WaterSprite — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:24:36 -0800

Thanks ever so much for the Sylvia Plath and the Jaques Brel!

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:48:23 -0800

(& don't forget the film & video resources on ubuweb - there was a previous mefi fpp on this not terribly long ago, but i don't have time right now to look it up...)

By: H. Roark

H. Roark — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 20:20:27 -0800

Bob Dylan does Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

By: .kobayashi.

.kobayashi. — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 22:30:50 -0800

Thanks! This lead me to Jacques Brel doing Les Bourgeois, which just absolutely made my day.

By: misteraitch

misteraitch — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 04:44:19 -0800

Blimey: Ute Lemper singing Celan's Blume to music by Michael Nyman; an extract from Edith Sitwell's Façade with music by William Walton sung (sort-of) by Jeremy Irons; an echoey recitation of Montale's La casa dei doganieri; an even-echoier Ezra Pound intoning a short extract from the Cantos; a very brief clip of Akhmatova reciting To the Muse...