lyrikline is an international website for poetry. They've got an excellent search engine for their growing list of poets in english and in translation (more than 1600 poets so far).

Head on over and listen to some Ron Padgett, or John Giorno, then let yourself discover poets from Iran, Vietnam, or Cyprus.

Lots to explore here.

Here's the site's official description:

"lyrikline is an international website for experiencing the diversity of contemporary poetry. Here you can listen to the melodies, sounds, and rhythms of international poetry, recited by the authors themselves, and read the poems both in their original languages and various translations."

Perhaps you've read Ron Padgett's Love Poem. If not, it's below. Or you can listen to him reading it.

Love Poem

We have plenty of matches in our house.
We keep them on hand always.
Currently our favorite brand is Ohio Blue Tip,
though we used to prefer Diamond brand.
That was before we discovered Ohio Blue Tip matches.
They are excellently packaged, sturdy
little boxes with dark and light blue and white labels
with words lettered in the shape of a megaphone,
as if to say even louder to the world,
“Here is the most beautiful match in the world,
its one-and-a-half-inch soft pine stem capped
by a grainy dark purple head, so sober and furious
and stubbornly ready to burst into flame,
lighting, perhaps, the cigarette of the woman you love,
for the first time, and it was never really the same
after that. All this will we give you.”
That is what you gave me, I
become the cigarette and you the match, or I
the match and you the cigarette, blazing
with kisses that smoulder toward heaven.

It's available in the Collected Poems of Ron Padgett, which unfortunately is out of print, and many people I'm sure are familiar with an early draft of it from the film Paterson:

But did you know that in the 60s, Saul Bass designed the packaging for the Ohio Match Co.?

Photos by the always wonderful Present & Correct.

"POP&ROLL is an innovative art project that blurs the lines between functionality, design, and artistic expression. Founded by the visionary artist kissmiklos, our project encompasses three distinct but interconnected spaces: the Art Gallery, the Art Shop, and the pioneering Art Toilet."

From the mind of Kissmiklos.

An oldie but a goodie. Gotta be my favorite talk show performance. I watch it a couple times a year. Sam Herring's sincerity and vulnerability; the unexpected change in his voice's tone; Letterman's joyous expression of delight. So great.

St Wilfrid's Catholic School in Crawley have produced an end-of-year video featuring their headmaster — a faithful shot-by-shot remake of Spike Jonze's video for Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice.

I was most impressed by the side-by-side comparison with the orginal:

As someone said on MeFi, such wholesome fun!

Impressive Kashaka playing by Yowie.

More on their YouTube channel and instruction available on Yowie's Patreon.

Wikipedia has info on this West african percussion instrument.

I'm not sure if Bastien Dausse considers himself a dancer or an acrobat, or both, but he's also an inventor and... sculptor, maybe?

Check out this video, which features Dausse and another performer working with two of his sculptures. Fantastic stuff.

And then there's this bit of business:

Which, of course, reminded me of this dance scene from Hal Hartley's Surviving Desire:

Dausse's site is here: Barks Copagnie.

If you dug these pieces, you'll also appreciate my post on Unorthodox Choreography.

Delightful Russian short film from 2013. Directed by Yulya Aronova. Absolutely charming.

via TKSS.

Terrific short film to promote the new Tutu Academy on the anniversary of the Hong Kong Ballet's 45th Anniversary.

You can watch the 3-minute film here:

You ever have a line of dialogue in your head and you can't remember what film it's from?

Enter PlayPhrase, a search engine for dialogue. It managed to properly source every phrase I threw at it:

"It's no longer your film," from Mulholland Drive.

"For me, the action is the juice," from Heat.

"Poured out like water on the ground," from The Thin Red Line.

"I'm quietly judging you," from Magnolia.

"Because you only have two forms of expression: silence and rage," from Midnight Run.

Pretty impressive. Not sure what it says about me that those are the phrases that came to mind, though.