The Dead - Billy Collins Animated Poetry

Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America's best-selling poets, reads his poem "The Dead" with animation by Juan Delcan of Spontaneous.

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 New York.

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The Poem - The dead are always looking down on us, they say, while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich, they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats, of heaven as they row themselves slowly through eternity. They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth, And when we lie down in a field or on a couch, Drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon, They think we are looking back at them, which makes them lift their oars and fall silent and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• poet
• laureat
• poetry
• Billy
• Collins
• animation
• JWT

[poofbegone29]

Oh, wow...my favorite line: "the glass-bottomed boats of heaven." So beautiful!

[davidls11]

That's why you shouldn't masturbate outdoors.

[halynamyroslava]

A lot of thanks

[bramdonga19]

lmao

[catjoekun]

If you are in the Bay Area in California, check out "HereAfterHere," an original show about what we think after we die. It includes videos such as this one, theatre, dance, and magic, all accompanied by original music. Check out hereafterhere(dot)com for more details!!

[dnggitg]

Those pristine pediments, those breathtaking crescents, those elegant... Whoa. You're waxing weird again. "Geeking out," in the American vernacular. Mop that moue off your mug as you ascend the ever-steeper plains, clad in the red James Dean jacket so many mirrors have duplicated, but hitherto with little success.

[dnggitg]

Fossick in a palatial mansion for lycanthropy serum. Lapse into a brown study, and from that pass into a signal malaise, in which capacity the veriest trifles assume gargantuan proportions. You can't wrench your gaze away from them, even when the luminous blue isms thronging on the cobbles and flagstones come clumping in to warble like a heavenly quire of William Morris wallpaper birds.

[dnggitg]

Untether the restive balloons dotting the firmament like red fire ants condemned to constant rebirth by Caesarean operation, venturing farther and farther from the cleaver of intellectual butchery with which you bisect the monistic One. Remember me to the dissenting minorities. Tell 'em Hangdog sent ya.

[marmas58ink]

@breeeegs I can definitely agree. Still sometimes I like to try interpret a poem the way you might an interesting dream. I don't think it comes down to reading TOO much into it though!

My pro. gtrist friend said reducing a song to a mere series of chords DOES often take away some of its magic. Like trying to see a poem as a series of chimes struck (creating harmonies, dissonances etc, creating thematic structure) I guess. It's fun, worthwhile... but more like a dream, it can never be so precise.

[LizaLips1]

I don't know why people are so upset about this. It was lovely. Even if you think it's taking the poem too literally it was still an enjoyable video.

[breeeegs]

poetry revolves around atmosphere and emotion more than logic. Poems can have meaning, but they use metaphors and language to create a mood that people connect with on an unconscious level. Trying to dissect a poem in such a cold amd clinical way is totally missing the point of what poems are meant to do