Welcome to our 2012 Season!
In 2012, our subscribers will enjoy a dozen new motionpoem adaptations of great poems from the pages of Best American Poetry 2011.
Our thanks to David Lehman, who made this partnership possible. We salute you, David, for 24 years of editing ”America’s most popular poetry anthology” (Publishers Weekly).
TODD AND ANGELLA
FRENCH MOVIE
I was in a French movie
and had only nine hours to live
and I knew it
not because I planned to take my life
or swallowed a lethal but slow-working
potion meant for a juror
in a mob-related murder trial,
nor did I expect to be assassinated
like a chemical engineer mistaken
for someone important in Milan
or a Jew journalist kidnapped in Pakistan;
no, none of that; no grounds for
suspicion, no murderous plots
centering on me with cryptic phone
messages and clues like a scarf or
lipstick left in the front seat of a car;
and yet I knew I would die
by the end of that day
and I knew it with a dreadful certainty,
and when I walked in the street
and looked in the eyes of the woman
walking toward me I knew that
she knew it, too,
and though I had never seen her before,
I knew she would spend the rest of that day
with me, those nine hours walking,
searching, going into a bookstore in Rome,
smoking a Gitane, and walking,
walking in London, taking the train
to Oxford from Paddington or Cambridge
from Liverpool Street and walking
along the river and across the bridges,
walking, talking, until my nine hours
were up and the black-and-white movie
ended with the single word FIN
in big white letters on a bare black screen.
DAVID LEHMAN
“French Movie” appears in Yeshiva Boys (Scribner, 2009) and is reprinted with the author’s permission. Copyright David Lehman 2009, all rights reserved.
More about David Lehman.
More about Scott Wenner.
2 Responses to “LEHMAN | WENNER | “French Movie””
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“What shapes the poem? Simple duration. To presence, the poet adds time by adding attention. To see at length is to say, and to say more, see more. Craft elaborates. Attention extends. On my deathbed, I shall want a longer not a more elaborate life. I shall want an extension, not a revision.” Donald Revell in THE ART OF ATTENTION.
motion504 Creative Director Scott Wenner, who designed and animated this motionpoem, commented, “This poem was difficult to work with because it’s very descriptive and specific, and references the French way of doing movies. I wanted to do something more unexpected in terms of visuals and sounds to go along with the words. Using the more suspenseful elements from the scenes, such as a glass dropping, actually assisted the words rather than compete with them. We also pulled back on the voiceover and sound design so that it came across as more conversational, and not overdramatized. It was important that everything felt realistic and cohesive especially when moving from photos to 3D.”