“Ode To New York City” is a Cinematic Poem Short Film Featuring Walt Whitman Directed By Alessio Cuomo.
Directed & Edited by Alessio Cuomo
Cinematography by Rene Koster
Creative Director – Marco Barneveld
Narrated by Eric Forsythe
Music by Joe Kraemer
Portraits of Immigrants – New York Public Library
Additional Footage courtesy – McKittrick Hotel
“Travel magazine Wideoyster presents a poetry film about New York. Ode To New York by Walt Whitman. A poetry video we made for travel magazine WideOyster.
The poem Give Me The Splendid Silent Sun was published in 1865, but Whitmans sharp-witted observations of the city are, perhaps, even more relevant today than when the poem was written.
Walt loved New York. Even though at the time it was a tough city to live in. He felt energized instead of overwhelmed by its constant motion, heard music instead of madness, and saw humanity instead of strangeness in its crowds.”
“GIVE ME THE SPLENDID SILENT SUN” by Walt Whitman
GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-
dazzling;
Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the
orchard;
Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows;
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape;
Give me fresh corn and wheat—give me serene-moving
animals, teaching content;
Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west
of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars;
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers,
where I can walk undisturb’d;
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman, of whom
I should never tire;
Give me a perfect child—give me, away, aside from the
noise of the world, a rural domestic life;
Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev’d, recluse
by myself, for my own ears only;
Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again,
O Nature, your primal sanities!
—These, demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless
excitement, and rack’d by the war-strife;)
These to procure, incessantly asking, rising in cries from
my heart,
While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city;
Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking
your streets,
Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time, refusing
to give me up;
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul—you
give me forever faces;
Article on film: http://www.wideoyster.nl/magazine3-eng/new-york-city/
Website: https://www.alessiocuomo.com/
