This is the YouTube poetry post.

March 26, 2007 12:31 PM

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.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (29 comments total)

Oh, and mouse-over for titles.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:31 PM on March 26, 2007

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.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:40 PM on March 26, 2007

Woohoo! I'll probably add more to the list later, but for now, here's my good friend Ken Arkind.
posted by roll truck roll at 12:51 PM on March 26, 2007

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"
posted by otio at 12:51 PM on March 26, 2007

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."
posted by MrMoonPie at 12:53 PM on March 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

A performance by The Four Horsemen a.k.a. bp Nichol, Steve McCaffery, Paul Dutton and Rafael Barreto-Rivera.
posted by Kattullus at 12:55 PM on March 26, 2007

Philip Larkin - The Lost Tapes
posted by otio at 12:58 PM on March 26, 2007

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.
posted by Kattullus at 1:05 PM on March 26, 2007

(Thanks jessamyn for restoring the DHTML titles in the post)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 1:19 PM on March 26, 2007

MrMoonPie, I now have an earworm of "Amazing Grace" to the tune of "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island." Thanks a lot, you bastard.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:21 PM on March 26, 2007

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.)
posted by Turtles all the way down at 1:29 PM on March 26, 2007

Thanks for the link to Jacques Brel. I had no idea you could get videos of his performances on YouTube.
posted by ontic at 1:29 PM on March 26, 2007

And, I've just discovered, with some NSFW still images.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 1:33 PM on March 26, 2007

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.
posted by Kattullus at 1:34 PM on March 26, 2007

Christopher Walken reads Poe's "The Raven."
posted by kid ichorous at 2:05 PM on March 26, 2007

Philip Levine reading "What Work Is" with a video montage.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 2:18 PM on March 26, 2007

Why do I prefer Cookie Monster? Is this overwhelming nostalgia or a symptom of arrested development? Should I be posting in AskMe?
posted by Cranberry at 2:31 PM on March 26, 2007

Wow, that's a lot of poets.

And Jim Morrison, too!

(I keed. Cool links.)
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:47 PM on March 26, 2007

The Cookie Monster rulez!
posted by homodigitalis at 2:49 PM on March 26, 2007

No Christopher Walken reading James Kirkup?
posted by Smedleyman at 3:21 PM on March 26, 2007

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.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 3:28 PM on March 26, 2007

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.
posted by saraswati at 3:35 PM on March 26, 2007

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).
posted by Wolfdog at 4:43 PM on March 26, 2007

what the hell, even [Ne Me Quitte Pas]?!?!?

In Ubustan, you would be flayed alive for that kind of blasphemy.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:11 PM on March 26, 2007

Thanks ever so much for the Sylvia Plath and the Jaques Brel!
posted by WaterSprite at 5:24 PM on March 26, 2007

(& 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...)
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:48 PM on March 26, 2007

Bob Dylan does Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie
posted by H. Roark at 8:20 PM on March 26, 2007

Thanks! This lead me to Jacques Brel doing Les Bourgeois, which just absolutely made my day.
posted by .kobayashi. at 10:30 PM on March 26, 2007

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...
posted by misteraitch at 4:44 AM on March 27, 2007