Allen Ginsberg's Recitation of "White Shroud"

I've seen this videoclip a billion times and thought I'd post it up here. It's of Allen Ginsberg talking about his methods of thought collecting and writing it all down. Closer to the end of the clip, he recites a poem called "White Shroud" which he dedicated to his deceased mother.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBDCrp_8NwM

You could say that Ginsberg's recitation is a form of adaptation. It was likely that he read that poem a million times over in front of a million different crowds and with every reading, his intonation and emphasis on certain words may have been altered during the process. He also had the authority to emit words or add them. So why then does it have such a strong effect on me as a listener, viewer, and reader? Doesn't he become a mere actor? A medium to repeat the lines of written work? Unlike the videoclip that I posted in the blog below of Ginsberg's "Howl", his recitation of "White Shroud" made the hair on my neck stand up. If films were stripped down to the core (if we take away the special effects, the sounds, the extras, etc ...) we'd be left with an actor/actress alone with his/her lines. All of the colorful and loud mumbo-jumbo that motion pictures presents to us steals away the intention or meaning of the author. I love this video clip of Ginsberg because we better understand his loyalty to his writings. When we hear him, he emphasizes again and again that what really matters is his writing.

Fidelity In Poem Adaptations: Is It Possible?

Every once in a while (or whenever time allows me), I try my best to find silence so I may immerse myself entirely in the works of my favorite poets. Lately, thanks to Youtube, I've been spending a lot of time going through videoclips of poets reading their poetry. A lot of the videos also include personal interpretations and include music and motion pictures to accompany the recited poems. Now, after reading a few of the comments under some of the videos, I noticed that a lot of people are apprehensive about what they're seeing and hearing. Many people discredited some videos for their failure in interpreting the "true" meaning of the poems while many others praise and thank the video creator for enlightening them.

Here is a video clip of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" released in a collection in 1956.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfBzCG4H8uo

One person commented on the animations of the video and suggested that it be more "abstract" rather than being right on point. In my opinion, I don't believe that this will make a difference. It will still be an adaptation nonetheless. Although the animation serves to clarify the meaning of the poem, it still fails to effectively express the brutality, the ugliness, and crude honesty coming from Ginsberg's words and his actual self.

Here are the first few lines of Ginsberg's epic poem "Howl":

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by

madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn

looking for an angry fix [...]

In these few lines, he speaks of deadly drug addictions and the fall of his fellow Beatnik comrades. I've read these lines over and over again and have it tattooed on my mind. I've allowed myself to be situated in Ginsberg's mind and allowed myself to feed on his every word until I understood and felt the hysteria that he speaks of. After watching the video, I was happy to see its colorful depictions but it was incapable at grabbing the meat and soul of the poem. I believe that any sort of interpretation cannot effectively emminate the profoundness and brutal honesty of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl".