Anansi Hides the Moon at Moving Poems

Hey, look what's at Moving Poems today! As Dave Bonta says: "Welcome. This is an on-going anthology of the best videopoems, filmpoems, animated poems, and other poetry videos from around the web, appearing at a rate of one every weekday most weeks."

Below is a screen shot. Click on it to go to the Anansi Hides the Moon page at Moving Poems. And while you're there, look at the collection of great videopoems Dave has amassed, watch as many as you wish, and make sure you subscribe to Moving Poems, a site which juts out on the forefront of multi-media poetry today.

                                          

Call for Submissions for a Valentine's Podcast at Via Negativa

Have a story, essay or poem about platonic love? Record and send it in for Dave's Valentine Podcast. 

Woodrat Podcast call for submissions: Platonic love

I’d like to produce another episode of the Woodrat Podcast with multiple contributors, like the one for Emily Dickinson’s 180th birthday back on December 10, except this time, I’m asking for original contributions on the theme of Platonic love for an episode to be published in one week — on Valentintine's...

                                          

Stone #35

Follow the green fire that's in your life and in mine. Billow. Float through green streams of smoke. Remember to look under the burning leaf.

ripples

Have you changed through the years? Or have you deepened into who you are?

I'm not talking about contentment, or dissatisfaction with now, or what led to here. There are events that shape us, yes. But our identity is something deeper than what befalls us. Who we are carries us through.

Really I can only speak for myself, and, though my life is perhaps not where I would like it to be, I'd say I've become more deeply the person I want to be. I don't think I've ever been outside who I am, and I haven't ever undergone such radical change as to seem like a different person to myself.

This talk is about that. I recorded it in 2008, and though it was posted in this blog when it was made, I have created an updated HD version.


direct link: ripples

(I like that colour, but I have no idea why YouTube is presenting a still of this more muted talk in such vibrant colours.)


_
Drop of water: Free Super Slow Motion Water Droplet.
The opening and closing music is a few bars from the first song on F.T.G.'s Le puits.

                                          

Stone #34

On this cold, windy day the trees,
their bare branches stick brooms
sweeping clouds across the sky.

Stone #33

In the park, a man, coiled dreads, Tai Chi, a thick, slow snowfall, festive card kind, layering whitely anything upperside to the sky.

Stone #32

the milky sun shines gloss gold in the slush mud puddle in the pot hole of the street even if it doesn't in the sky

What is a pebble? A moment of attention...

So many thoughtful responses to Dave Bonta's question, "What Kind of Attention," at a discussion post at Writing Our Way Home:

So I guess probably everyone here agrees with at least one of the following three propositions: that paying attention is worthwhile in and of itself, that the writing or other artwork that comes out of such moments of attention can be compelling, and that paying attention can lead to authentic/original insights. As a writer and reader, I've long admired poets such as Mary Oliver and John Haines whose poetry seems to originate in just this kind of attention to the world (which isn't to say that I don't like other kinds of writing, too). My question for writers and artists, though, is this: is there a special kind of attention that leads to the best insights? And does it exist purely in the observational moment, or is it also something that comes from immersion in the act of creation as well? What is the precise (or even the approximate) relationship between these two periods of attention?

Each response has depth and insight, and it's worthwhile to take a look at them. This is mine:

When I wrote a dent/tweet for AROS during January (and will be resuming), I found it interesting. Each day and night is filled to the brim with sensual awarenesses, emotions, thoughts, ideas, a full range, very complex, each moment, truly!

Yet I would have driven myself crazy if I thought, 'what to focus on, what to focus on.' There's so much, even in my very quiet reclusive life of daily samenesses.

What I found was it was like my 'writing self' set 'an intention' - an aros everyday. Because every day, even if it was nearing midnight and I was scrounging for something, anything, a moment always emerged with more 'weight' - like a pebble falling out of the sky.

This pebble fell from the sky as if it were from another landscape - one where 'a moment' could be expressed in a small image, or thought, or utterance, or poem.

In this other landscape, which is part of my landscape, language predominates. The pebble is a languaged construction of the world that I inhabit, I know that. Drawings, which I sometimes did, always needed the written component. And, afterall, this is a poetry group.

So, for me, it's not so much my attention in my world as listening for the moment that is realizing itself through my perception.

And it's heavy, heavier than the other moments, it carries a weight that is already transforming itself into words, and it is not likely that I would then miss it!

If any of this makes sense!