Friday, 22 June 2007

Billy Collins

After valiant efforts and many conversation with his agent, we have Billy Collins making a guest appearance on this blog, reading his poetry. Found these on YouTube. Enjoy.

"Noted for their intelligent humor, accessibility and observations on daily life, Collins' popular poems come alive further in a series of animated poems produced by JWT-NY."

The Best Cigarette
(This one's the pick of the bunch, IMO. Watch this even if you don't have time for the others.)



The Dead



Walking Across the Atlantic



Some Days



Now and Then



Hunger



Budapest



Forgetfulness





Three more, by ComedyFilm, who, unfortunately, does not allow embedding. These aren't animations. Just slide shows and some background sounds.

A History of Weather
Shoveling Snow with the Buddha
Saturday Morning

Two more from Acumensch, who, unfortunately, et cetera.

Man in Space
Sweet Talk

And Collins introduces the Best American Poetry event at the New School 9/21/06 and mentions the controversy surrounding the publication. (Very fuzzy video shot by someone in the audience who wasn't in a good seat. But the audio's clear.)




And since we're ODing on Collins, here are some more links from emails that, erm, may have, um, been sent to you, in a manner of speaking, by me.

See The Best Cigarette where
All 33 tracks are available for FREE DOWNLOAD.
Internet Archive.(whole album or track by track)
Download.com. (song by song)

You can download, share these, burn these, give these for non-commerical puposes (you can't make money off it). For the full details read the creative commons non-commerical use license here.
More:

On Minstrels:
Introduction to Poetry
Sonnet
Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles
Marginalia
Litany
Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes
On Turning Ten

And a bunch of links shamelessly lifted from here.

Another Reason I don't Keep a Gun in the House (Also here)
Ave Atque Vale
Child Development (Also here)
The Dead
Dear Reader
The Guest (From the very rare, out of print, "Video Poems")
Hangover Procedure #12: Emptying The Jacket Pockets (Also from "Video Poems")
The History Teacher
I Ask You (Audio available)
I go back to the house for a book (Also here)
Introduction to Poetry (Also here and here)
Invention (Audio available)
Japan (Also here)
Jazz and Nature
Lines Lost Among Trees
Man Listening to Disc (Audio available)
Marginalia
Neither Snow (Audio available)
On Turning Ten (Also here)
Paris
Putting Down the Cat
Questions about Angels
Sonnet
Shoveling Snow With Buddha
Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles
Study in Orange and White
Thesaurus
Three Wishes

For Collins reading Nightclub, go here and click on "Recordings" just below his photograph.

Phew.

1 comment:

Subramaniam Avinash said...

I don't know what you found on those links but most of the links say 'not found'. i suppose you might call that sheer poetry.