all about the vibes
I've been working on some fun little aesthetic vibe videos inspired by other writers on Instagram I've seen..usually for novels and never for poetry, and yet, I realize that poetry books also, though they may or may not contain narrative and stories, definitely DO have a vibe. In fact, you could always say that poetry is sometimes JUST vibes. An experience, a moment, an intangible piece of communication. It's yet another thing I am not sure that AI could produce of translate, even with hashtags. I did an experiment earlier with the image generator where I typed the phrase of one of my favorite Tik Tok aesthetics--dark academia (which is really just all of our styles in the 90s if we read too much Donna Tartt) and it gives me nonsense, and yet, most people would understand what I'm talking about. It's a mood. A set of moods. A vibe. (and while humans understand vibes, which can be associative or sensory) I don't think robots do.
My other realization is that some of my newer work echoes the vibes of other books, but in subtly different ways. I've oft remarked on the similarities between IN THE BIRD MUSEUM and AUTOMAGIC, both with a victorian feel and darkness (though I would say there are more modern poems in the former, and actually sci-fi inspired poems in the latter.) They both have birds obv...the pieces of the Cornell poems in the first. the bird artist series in the other. The stifling victorian rooms of both books are a major part of the vibe,, and yet, I would choose wholly different images for each in my reel.You can see the AUTOMAGIC one as part of the promo I did back in the spring, and the BIRD MUSEUM one I made yesterday, especially with many of the latter books poems actually having a more modern feel (even the Resurrection Mary series) than the victorian genre pieces and the Cornell stuff. There is more of a sense of movement and chronology in that book, and also, as I noticed in the one I made for THE FEVER ALMANAC, a book I would describe as beginning with a rural vibe and ending in a city with a poem about subways. Thus, the imagery changes throughout the book and the reel.
These are glorious fun, and I actually made a couple in the past year about works in progress, sort of inspo boards in video format as a taste of what I'm working on. Last summer, GRANATA, and earlier this year, RUINPORN, the manuscript I just completed. In both cases, they both help reflect and inspired me as I go. I even did a similar one just for my shorter series,villains because I had the images saved for making daily NAPOWRIMO reels. There's something about them that appeals to the collage-ist in me (plus music!) Be on the look out for more of older books and newer projects...
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