A postmodern elegy for the mourner and mourned

By Poetry News

The poet Ashley David has taken a poem of mourning and turned it inside out. Her work could be categorized as a visual elegy, a short film, or a theoretical poetry pastiche—but it is at once all and none of these things. She calls her 18 minute poetry experiment “a performance of theory, a performance of postmodern elegy, a performance of text” and invites listeners to “co-create the experience” along with her.  At collaborative online journal the Offending Adam, Nik De Dominic introduces David’s innovate work by integrating it into his own experience:

Over the last two weeks or so, I have watched this video multiple times. It has been in the background as I checked my email, watched other clips on youtube, and g-chatted with colleagues and friends. I smoked in bed with the laptop on my chest. This morning, I brushed my teeth and got ready for class as the video streamed next to the running faucet. Maybe the phone rang and I took a call for twenty minutes to return to the video or just kept it quietly playing in the background. David mentions that one quality of postmodern elegy is that the mourned takes a backseat to the mourner and through the translation of this piece from presentation to online video, both the mourner and the mourned took backseat to my own life, quietly informing my day-to-day. . .

Sound good? Immerse yourself:

Read more at the Offending Adam.

2010-08-18

Posted in Video on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 by Poetry News.