I’ve just posted a new video poem to Youtube!
Watch “Dandelion Tea” Here
Since this last winter I’ve been putting together little video poems like this one. They are simple as far as production and videography are concerned, and one might say that about the poems also. But I find myself drawn to this form, this vehicle for language.
Some time ago, Guillaume Apollinaire wrote about poets and cinema saying, “…one can predict the day when, the photographs and the cinema having become the only form of publication in use, the poet will have a freedom heretofor unknown.”*
Although photo and video are not the only means of publication today, they are seeming to take over. It is easy to imagine the day they are the main, if not sole platforms for “written” communication.
Anyway, I find the videos fun to make–I’ve been gathering together my process and watching where troubles arise during composition and laying out the video (I mean, I don’t even know the word for laying out video).
This little poem was the result of going into the back yard to photograph some dandelions for my partner then, one thing led to another, and you have the poem linked to here:
Dandelion Tea
Dandelion Tea
This morning I went outside to gather up some dandelions for tea
Thinking it would help offset allergies when I inevitably must mow the lawn
Plus you would perhaps reward my making surprise tea for us
Then I heard them buzzing at my feet
They were too enamored with our lawn to bother with me
As they bounded from one blossom to the next
You could see their frenzied compulsion pulling them deep
Into the pearled passion of each pristine dandelion
I was just an obstruction
Even as they obstructed me
See, they starve for that pollen
They yearn for it
Like a living impulse they plunge into the powdery plumes
Paralyzed in sweet penance not pondering their position or their pride
I hope you will understand
I will not deny nature its palpable paradise lighted by these precious suns
Until its primal motive has satiated and the bees have finished their work
I will sneeze and blow my nose for them
Because theirs is the same impulse that pulls me to you and you to me
Spring, my dear, is only beginning
*From “The Avant-Garde Tradition in Literature” ed. Richard Kostelanetz.
Dan Dorman 
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