Normally, I think of YouTube as a delightfully weird home for bad dance videos, bootleg partial episodes of TV Shows, cute cat videos, weird marketing shills, hilarious PhotoShop tutorials and lesbian web series.
I discovered today that it is also a gold mine of poetry readings. Often set to music.
Earlier this morning I was reminded of a favourite poem of mine, Ithaca from C.P. Cavafy, by by Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project (one of my fav books I read this year - if you haven't read it, definitely check it out). Gretchen quoted a stanza from it which made me want to read the whole poem. In doing a search, I discovered a cornucopia of readings of it on YouTube:
- A reading from this fellow who is doing readings of all of Cavafy's poems that he has translated from the original greek.
- Sean Connery (SEAN CONNERY!!) giving a somewhat ponderous reading set to the music of Vangellis
- This charming version from PoeticTouch.com read by Lilly Hertz-Maahs
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised when this three-year old's poetry recitation is the latest video hit (the YouTube link doesn't allow embedding so I'm using the Yahoo version where he has received over 2 million views). John Lundberg has a nice little piece on this reciting phenom over at Huff Post.
3-year-old recites poem, "Litany" by Billy Collins @ Yahoo! Video