P.O.T.E.

An ongoing project translating the text of E.E. Cummings into moving compositions.

Cumming’s poems are abstracted in a form that accompanies and enhances the text. In order for the reader to experience them, they must be seen not read.

P.O.T.E. (Poetry of the Eye) is a series which explores this abstraction further through a new mode: animation.

P.O.T.E.

An ongoing project translating the text of E.E. Cummings into moving compositions.

Cumming’s poems are abstracted in a form that accompanies and enhances the text. In order for the reader to experience them, they must be seen not read.

P.O.T.E. (Poetry of the Eye) is a series which explores this abstraction further through a new mode: animation.

Birds

In this reinterpretation, four stanzas become quadrants on a grid. Each has its moment of emphasis, cycling through the text and revealing the author's line indentations. The text describes birds in flight disappearing.

Snow poster

The text describes snowflakes falling in twilight. Broken onto many lines, the spacing, typography and punctuation provide visual guidance to its subject. Motion adds a new layer of guidance, adding and removing emphasis on individual lines.

Bells

Often Cumming’s poems are a visual presentation to whatever is being stated or described. In the original text, repetition and broken lines are a presentation of Sunday morning bells ringing. In this exercise, the motion does the same: it moves back and forth with an invisible weight swinging the text to rearrange.

How poster

The text of the poem reads: “how tinily of squirming between two stones a greenest you becomes mysteriously white, one, thou.” The original text, broken across many lines, is reinterpreted in motion with each stanza separated by a line.


Floatingly arrive

Like the pages in a book might separate a long poem, frames in motion give pause and separate to text. In this interpretation, the form of the text, informed by its original line breaks and indentations, responds to its frame as it cycles through the stanzas.