These three videos are only part of the picture. Paik was one of the first to experiment with video as a new art form and his innovative techniques, such as the placing of TV monitors within the visual framework of the video, became the model for video artists who would follow. With its avant-garde fusion of lyric poetry and music by the Beetles' Bob Dylan, and Jefferson Airplane, it most closely resembles the three videos of the Manhattan Poetry Video Project. Since then, he has produced poetry videos of such poets as Charles Bernstein, Brian McInerny, and Charlie Morrow. But with good poetry, I feel it's an interruption of the work.
Videos give an excuse to mediocre poets to heighten the effects in their poetry with electricity.
Schultz, who has not worked with poetry videos, is not all negative, however. If poetry videos help achieve this in some fashion, then that's great. Off the Page and Onto the Stage Part of the problem in establishing poetry videos lies in the fact that they haven't yet caught on with the more mainstream poets. So far, involvement in such projects has remained exclusively with performance poets, whose work has generally takes them out of the traditional venues of the poetry establishment. They haven't made the leap yet to other, less stage-oriented poets.