Poems

 After a tutorial, I started looking at poems that I could use as a narrative to guide my experience. 

I wanted something not too long but with good imagery. I also wanted something that I would be able to read aloud since some poems are a bit hard to read due to using old English which can be somewhat challenging.

I looked at this website: 

49 Best Poems About Dreams (Categorized) (wordwool.com)

and found this poem called "The Garden of Dreams", which had some nice imagery but some of the words like "drouth" and "fro" are a bit challenging to pronounce and I think that would increase the chances of me making a mistake when trying to read it. Although I would have multiple chances to record myself reading it for the final piece, I think there would be better options. 

The Garden of Dreams

My heart is a garden of dreams
Where you walk when day is done,
Fair as the royal flowers,
Calm as the lingering sun.

Never a drouth comes there,
Nor any frost that mars,
Only the wind of love
Under the early stars,—

The living breath that moves
Whispering to and fro,
Like the voice of God in the dusk
Of the garden long ago.

Bliss Carman

The next poem that really stood out to me was "A Dream" by Edgar Allan Poe, I had heard of Poe before in school so I knew they were a well-known poet. I also liked that the poem had rhyming in it, because it create a sort of rhythm for the piece.

There is also a nice contrast in the poem with the use of "dark" and "light", which are elements which I can portray in my piece and I was also thinking about experimenting with lighting in this project so it is good in that aspect too. 

A Dream

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam,
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro’ storm and night,
So trembled from afar
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth’s day star?

Edgar Allan Poe

I looked at this analysis of the poem to gather a better understanding of it: A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe - Poem Analysis

From this I gather that the story of this poem is a speaker explaining their experience with dreams and daydreams and how the experience a lot of darkness in their life and are looking at the past thinking about the things that they cannot and don't have. Around the 3rd stanza they view the daydreams as a guiding light and at the end I presume they are talking about the sun and comparing it to the brightness of the daydreams.

Therefore, I decided on this poem to use in my project. To get a better understanding of the poem and how other people portray it, I had a look at some descriptions of it as well as this video reading of it:

A Dream, by Edgar Allan Poe - YouTube (from poetry zone)

This video consists of a still image, someone reading the poem, the words of the poem and some instrumental music. The way the poem is read makes it very moving and they convey a sort of mysterious or eerie feeling with it. I would like to portray the poem in a more positive way, but it is still interesting to see how they use the reading and the image to make it feel this way.

Edgar Allan Poe's "A Dream Within A Dream" by Arron Quinn - YouTube

This video is an animation of another one of Poes poems, they use a bit of animation to preface the poem and set the scene then tell the story of the poem using the animation. This poem although also having dream in the title is quite different since it's explaining the speakers experience with things in his life slipping away from him. Though I won't be using this poem this is a good example of taking a poem and creating something visual from it.