Digitally Interpreting Wendell Berry and Billy Collins

Thanks to posts at the always wonderfully illuminating Brain Pickings the other day, I read and enjoyed (again) a poem by Billy Collins about the art of writing and then discovered a Wendell Berry poem about writing poetry. (I then donated a small amount to support Brain Pickings, because if Maria inspires me, as she does, I should support her, right?)

I decided to close read the poems with the new Lumen5 tool,  which creates interesting digital pieces from found text on the web, choosing poetic lines from the larger poem (neither of my versions is the entire poem) and revamping them as a sort of digital story. I like the way each piece came out, and how I had to adapt the imagery of the poem to the imagery of the, well, images I chose to go with phrases of the poem.

Was I writing? Is this writing? Did the ants follow me home?

Peace (and advice),
Kevin

4 Comments
  1. Seems like Lumen5 may work better with poetry than with narrative. Have you tried to take some of your past blog articles into Lumen5?

    • I’ve avoided that (my own posts) in order to cast my views on the writing of others, in hopes of better understanding what I am reading (as opposed to what I am writing). Not sure if that makes sense or not.
      Kevin

  2. I am a Berry aficionado and would be happy to recommend a few other books if you are interested.

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