despairoftranslators:

So much loving Yulin Kuang’s “I Didn’t Write This” series of short films. It’s a gorgeously simple idea, that reel of cinematic art unfolding alongside and in conversation with a literary work, like a peek into someone else’s dreams. Or like your own dreams, when you fall asleep with a favorite book on your chest.

So: here are my poem suggestions. I’ve fallen in love with the work of Mary Oliver, whose work so often gives me the strange upside-down feeling of being recognized by someone I’ve never met. There’s a quiet, attentive beauty to her work that I think would blend well with Yulin’s warm, funny, careful director’s eye.

STARLINGS IN WINTER

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

THE MESSENGER

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/182469559256.

carlsonnyoung:

As I walked out one evening

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1L3dVKL.

welovewebseries:

“I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you. Till China and Africa meet”

Something I loved, even from the first time watching As I Walked Out One Evening, was how the spinny kiss came so early. It’s supposed to be the climax, like it was in Ode. But here it comes almost at the beginning, echoing the poem’s opening celebration of love that outlasts continents.

It creates a sense of expectation, even apprehension. The story has to go somewhere. If the speaker is already spinny-kissing and waxing rhapsodic about timeless love, where is there left to go?

And then it goes there. Auden, and Yulin and Mary Kate and Zack, go there. And Sean goes there, especially in the voiceover, which is my favorite favorite thing.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1PBZO2u.

despairoftranslators:

So much loving Yulin Kuang’s “I Didn’t Write This” series of short films. It’s a gorgeously simple idea, that reel of cinematic art unfolding alongside and in conversation with a literary work, like a peek into someone else’s dreams. Or like your own dreams, when you fall asleep with a favorite book on your chest.

So: here are my poem suggestions. I’ve fallen in love with the work of Mary Oliver, whose work so often gives me the strange upside-down feeling of being recognized by someone I’ve never met. There’s a quiet, attentive beauty to her work that I think would blend well with Yulin’s warm, funny, careful director’s eye.

STARLINGS IN WINTER

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

THE MESSENGER

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1TUIA6k.

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1TUIBqY.

yulinisworking:

I Didn’t Write This | upcoming episodes 10 & 11

Directed by Yulin Kuang
Choreography by Emmy Frevele 
Edited by Kyla Plewes
Produced by Whitney Milam & Kimberly Hwang

shot by Zack Wallnau (photos 1-5)
shot by Alyssa Brocato (photos 6-10)

–

POETRY + DANCE! = two of my favorite installments to the IDWT series to date. What poems they be?? Nope, not telling. I also had a GoPro handy for both of these shoots, for some fun director’s POV BTS.

–

Two of the Zack Wallnau photos show the old Point Loma Lighthouse. As a kid when I sailed out of San Diego I liked to look at it from the water, but I never visited it in person. It hasn’t been used as a navigational aid since the 1890s, when it was replaced by a light closer to the water that wouldn’t be as easily obscured by low clouds and fog.

Looking forward to the episodes!

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for ever, it seems

(by request for welovewebseries)

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1Bd44CA.

marykatewiles:

yulinkuang:

I Didn’t Write This is a new literary adaptation series in which I adapt and direct excerpts of poetry and literature written by other people. Basically one long commercial for why we read. My goal is to get parts of poetry and literature stuck in your head like a good song. Or John Mulaney’s standup. 

Sometimes I say things at the end of the videos; you don’t have to watch those parts. New episodes every Friday, until we run out of world enough and time. Subscribe, maybe? 

Also I’m using “yulinisworking” as the official Tumblr tag on this series, because IDWT and “I Didn’t Write This” get a decent amount of outside traffic as it is.

I Didn’t Write This – Ep. 2: As I Walked Out One Evening by W.H. Auden

Directed by Yulin Kuang

Starring Mary Kate Wiles and Sean Persaud

Shot by Zack Wallnau
Styled by Julika Engols
Sound by Justin Lee Dixon

I first discovered W.H. Auden back in high school, when this boy (who I had a giant crush on) put a quote from an Auden poem in his Facebook profile. I never mentioned it to said crush, but I ended up reading a whole bunch of Auden because of him, and that worked out because Auden is a pretty rad poet who doesn’t get enough love, in my opinion. I rediscovered this poem while reading John Green’s Looking for Alaska and so I had Sean record it and here we are.

We filmed this on location in Solstice Canyon in Malibu, California. It’s a really pretty hiking spot that ends up at the ruins of this 1950’s mansion, and then you can scramble up through the backyard onto these different waterfall landings. Highly recommend if you’re in the area.

Reblog and tell me your thoughts about the poem, about your favorite lines, about this adaptation, I would love to hear them!

Full text of “As I Walked Out One Evening”, by W. H. Auden

Much love,

Yulin Kuang
http://ift.tt/1aMnLyM
http://ift.tt/LuyMys

I didn’t promote these at the time because they feature Sean and me and I wanted to save the suspense of seeing us together for the end of our KitR chapter, but now that that’s over, if you haven’t checked these out yet, they’re lovely little visualizations of poems by Yulin, as well as some YA passages as well. This one in particular is my favorite, but head on over to her channel and check them all out.

This one is also my favorite. Sometimes I say that facetiously (“This is my favorite! And this one too! And this one over here! They’re all my favorite!”), but in this case I mean it literally. (Literally literally).

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1lfZfdC.

Hey, I’ve been there. And now, canonically, so have Lily and James.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/Pu8Zbi.

I like that I’ve actually been here, and that the setting is a lot like where I live, and that walking along a bluff-backed southern California beach poking at little tidepools is in fact something I do (and have done, as my 15-year-old profile pic will attest) a lot of.

One teency thing that seemed not quite right: That Mary Kate is wearing shoes while sitting on the blanket in that one shot. Would someone do that? I would have thought she would remove her shoes immediately on reaching the sand. I’m curious if there’s any backstory or explanatory head-canon about that.

But I liked the video a lot.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1foPXNf.