The poem I chose is Frank O’Hara’s “Steps”. I’m not sure what it was about this poem exactly, but I really took a liking to it. Maybe it’s the videos of Frank O’Hara we watched in class that made me mildly fascinated with him and his poetic approach. Maybe it’s the fact that this is such a blatantly “New York poem”. Maybe I just find it peculiar that I read this poem in his voice and in complete sentences, even though it’s all so erratically separated. The poem is confusing, but intriguing, and focuses on the human need for contact, social interaction, and intimacy.
My digital portion of the project will most likely end up being a video. I edited a lot of footage when I was younger, and although I never filmed much and haven’t touched an editing program in a while, this will be a fun experience for me. My idea of this is a video of small snippets of footage put together in order of relation to the poem, and the video will be accompanied by a reading of the poem and some background music. The reading will dictate what footage you see. I want to take a somewhat literal approach to some parts of the poem, and a metaphorical approach to others. What I mean by this is when “coffee” is mentioned, show a simple cup of coffee, but when “love you so much” is said, show something much greater and more meaningful. I have listened to several readings of this poem (Frank O’Hara never had one) and none of them seem to capture the pace and tone of what I envision my video to be like, so I may have to narrate myself. I don’t expect this project to be easy at all, and feel like it will be very time consuming, but I hope to enjoy the final product.
