Educational Media Reviews Online

Performance artist/teacher Mary-Averett Seelye didactically describes the process of working with poetry: "take poetry off the printed page, memorize it and move it." Through her own analysis of her work as well as that of poet Josephine Jacobsen whose work is "moved" in this video, the viewer is provided with a description of the process of poetry, that is to say, how the performer seeks to become the poem, sets the movement and then becomes the embodiment of the written word.

We are told that Josephine Jacobsen's poetic concerns relate to gesture being the oldest form of communication, and in her poetry she attempts to explore the subtleties of feeling while being sensitive to spatial contexts. In a taped performance of her poem, Pondicherry Blues, Seelye first performs the poem on a stage. This performance is used as the basis of Vin Grabill's video. The added dimension of layering video images against a silhouette of Seelye's performed movements transforms the poem even further and takes it to another level, with the words being both disembodied and part of a new cohesive whole.

It is rather surprising then, to listen to Seelye and Jacobsen discuss Mrs. Pondicherry, the character in the poem. They interpret what sort of person she is and construct a narrative about the meaning of her life. They most likely do this for viewers and students unwilling or unable to think about art in the abstract without necessarily interpreting and assigning the "true" meaning to it. It is unfortunate that these two artists remark that attributing meaning in their work is secondary yet spend so much time interpreting this fictional character's motivations. What is compelling about these performance/poetry videos is indeed that the words become sounds and the viewer becomes attuned to the motion and rhythm of the sounds as well as to the movements of the image, rather than imagining character development based on physical descriptions.

This video is recommended as a teaching tool for English, Dance, Theatre, Inter-related Arts, Video Arts, at the High School level. It is somewhat limited in depth for the College and University levels in the Arts.