Say it in a Shade of Succint: Cell Poems

You can buck the system and resist the un-filtered verbal onslaught of a new and frighteningly social world, or you can embrace the fascinating and fantastic possibilities it may create.

Take for example a site I heard mentioned in a recent Poetry.com podcast: Cellpoems.org

I love the idea of super-condensed poetic license  where the poet is constrained by but flourishes within 160 characters.  Also adding to the appeal is the amusing addition of poem notes and author bios that far, far exceed the length of any of the works themselves.

Below are the two most recent submissions to the site:

DIY FML Daymare Mnemonic

Dora Malech

I do it the old-fashioned way tie string around the finger except instead try rope-to-throat though the last word’s still “remember.”

 

And the moon

Erika Meitner

shut in cold blue light, in blown snow, my son’s breath a forgiveness a road- side x a windshield a tunnel a handful of pebbles.

 

Sign up for the poems as an RSS feed or to of course receive via your cell phone…

 

Don’t Have Time for a Movie? Watch a Short!

So, I love movies in that I can take in a complete story line in the period of 1 1/2 – 2 hours. I’m a woman on the go and I have a hard time sitting myself down long enough to take in a show every week with regularity.  But, squeeze that gratification in under 20 minutes? We have a winner!

Futureshorts, a website that hosts international short films, bears an extensive collection to choose from. Check out their hoard of short clips on youtube.

They boast gems like “Tell it to the Fishes” a ten-minute(ish) short featuring the talents of Dylan More, of snarky Bristish Comedy “Black Books” fame.

Short film makers learn to distill down the action, the striking moments of a film so they fit into the shortest of time frames.  Check out this short film coming in at under three minutes:

Hope you enjoy!

Even the Wildlife Isn’t Real

This interesting story (Wildlife filmmaker Chris Palmer shows that animals are often set up to succeed) just came out in the Washington Post in response to environmental film maker Chris Palmer’s new scandalous (you can tell this word has various degrees of seriousness for the average reader) tell-all about the fakery that goes on in capturing the natural side of wildlife.

I was a little distraught to find out my own idol, David Attenborough (I will forever observe interesting moments of animal behavior in nature with an astute British man’s voice narrating the action in my head) has even indulged in staging a moment of coital bliss between a pair of scorpions in a studio. However, one would have to be a bit thick (and I mean this in the nicest way possible) to realize the scene in Blue Planet where they show deep sea fish and plankton zipping about involves souped-up sound effects. First of all, the nature of sound in the sea means we hear ocean audible in a very distorted manner, but I hardly think minute little ctenophores sound like 80’s influenced sci-fi spaceships.

But perhaps the most horrifying part of the article is this little clip:

“The lemmings that plunge to their deaths in the 1958 Disney documentary “White Wilderness” were hurled ingloriously to their doom by members of the crew, as a Canadian documentary revealed.”

I will not be able to watch an animal documentary for a bit yet without thinking there may perhaps be an over-worked wildlife cinematographer roughing up the baby seals before the next take so they look nice for the camera…

And on the same type of note, the photo featured above was taken by wildlife photographer José Luis Rodriguez, recently stripped of his National History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year title. Tiger Woods ain’t got nothing on being a wildlife documentarian….