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

[davidls11]

That's why you shouldn't masturbate outdoors.

[poofbegone29]

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

[Sarah Allen]

One of my favorite poets. Now i'm trying out my own video poetry on my channel, I'd love some feedback. Check it out, see what you think.

[cutecupkait]

This is great. It's a shame he has to read it in such a monotone voice, lol. That was the only thing I didn't like. I was like...uh, was that Microsoft Sam?

[Halyna Myroslava]

A lot of thanks

[Bram Donga]

lmao

[Simon Harrison]

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.