Photo by Alysse Einbender
Just had to share this beautiful mix of word, sound, image and movement. It’s called a video poem — a testament to the potency of mixed media. The last four lines are especially poignant for writers. Enjoy.
And if you’d like to read along:
Reticent Sonnet
A pronoun is a kind of withdrawal from naming.
Because naming is heavy, naming may be slightly shaming
We live much more lightly than this
we address ourselves allusively in our minds –
as “I” or “we” or “one” – part of a system
that argues with shadow, like Venetian blinds
Speaking of Venice, called “the Shakespeare of cities” by a friend of mine
reminds me how often the Sonnets misprint “their” for “thine”:
beware the fog in Venice.
Beware those footsteps that stop in a hush.
I used to think I would grow up to be a person whose reasoning was deep.
instead I became a kind of brush.
I brush words against words. So do we follow ourselves out of youth
brushing, brushing, brushing wild grapes onto truth.
Anne Carson