Valentine’s Day draws nigh, and we can only assume our readers are desperately wondering how to declaim love poetry without looking like a total prat.
Set it to music?
Go for it, but let’s not forget the fate of that soulful young fellow on the stairs of Animal House when his sweet airs fell upon the ears of John Belushi.
Sarah Huff, a young and relentlessly crafty blogger, hit upon a much better solution when animating E.E. Cummings’ 1952 poem [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] for an American Literature class’ final project at Sinclair Community College.
Her construction paper cutouts are charming, but what really makes her rendering sing is the way she takes the pressure off by setting it to an entirely different love song. (Echoes of Cummings’ goat-footed balloon man in Terra Schneider’s Balloon (a.k.a. The Beginning)?)
Released from the potential perils of a too sonorous interpretation, the poet’s lines gambol playfully throughout the proceedings, spelled out in utilitarian alphabet stickers.
It’s pretty puddle-wonderful.
Watch it with your Valentine, and leave the read aloud to the punctuation-averse Cummings, below.
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart
Related Content:
E.E. Cummings Recites ‘Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town,’ 1953
The Mystical Poetry of Rumi Read By Tilda Swinton, Madonna, Robert Bly & Coleman Barks
Jeeze, you’re making a girl blush over here. Thanks for featuring this project on your site. It was a real labor of love and super fun to make. I love stop motion for its quirky, shifty imperfections. Poetry, perhaps, is well-paired with it because it helps to offset the pruned and edited perfection of a carefully -even laboriously- turned word.
Happy Valentine’s day, all! I spend it happily in a snow-snuggled home cozied up with my husband and our week-old son. I wish you all a similar contentedness – “higher than soul can hope or mind can hide”.
Sarah, You are so talented and this is so wonderful! Thank you for all the work you must have done to create such a beautiful and happy piece of art. It is truly a delight in every way!