[image: First image is a wide shot of two quilts hanging on a wall, both are in the shape of eight-pointed stars. One quilt’s bottom half is black and the top has one quadrant of white and one red with black and white markings all over and a smaller eight-pointed star in the center (top half yellow and bottom half white); the other quilt is all black and white. Second image is a close up of the color quilt’s center star, revealing that the markings are pressed insects. Third image is a close up of the black quilt, which has an all-black center star with buffalo and shapes around it. Fourth image show that the markings on the black quilt are words, perhaps forming a poem.]
Angel Nafis is paying attention. She talks with VS cohosts Danez Smith and Franny Choi about learning to rescale her sight, getting through grad school with some new skills in her pocket, activated charcoal, and her two Franks (Ocean and O’Hara). (The Poetry Foundation)
[image: White back ground with black text, black line work of arrows, and other sharp shapes, and what appear to be ink spots and smears. First image’s text begins, “HOW THEY COMMUNICATE // HOW THEY PROGRAM,” and the language breaks down from there.]
[image: Yellowing pages of what appears to be a dictionary. The page includes the entries from “incubus” to “knee,” and some of the entries include illustrations. Stamped over the page in blue letters are the words, “SERIES OF PICTURES SHOWN IN QUICK SUCCESSION.” Some of the words have stamped red arrows pointing from them to other words, additional stamped images in other colors, or the illustrations on the page.]
[image: Black line work of varying details and textures on a white background. First segment features block text made of small geometric lines, “AS BABY/ TESTS/ AT BEST/ ABYSS.” Second segment is more spaced out, the text varying between stencil-like outlines and typewriter font. Some stencils letters are bunched together so as to make the words unclear. Clear text reads, “Had no fuel–/I’m/A/Sinner/written off/as a minor note.”]
[image: Cream paper with white strips covering up large portions of text, the black font left untouched forming the poem. First segment: “God went/crowdsurfing at Kinfolk 94/clad in/Yeezy Boosts/God floated/overhead/This is for all my ladies/she said.”]
In this startling animation of Muriel Rukeyser’s “Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars),” two lives unfold in split screen, one during the tumultuous world events of 1968, the other 50 years later against a new landscape of uncertainty and ever-present digital technology. Created in partnership with Manual Cinema.
[video: A split screen of two women in shadow going about their lives, mirroring each other’s actions. The left panel in yellow tones is set in 1968, the right panel in blue tones is set in 2018. The screen occasionally becomes one in grey tones when shared imagery of protesters, world events, and cultural touchstones that link the two women’s lived experiences.]
In the second installment of Word: Collected PoetryTrace DePass contemplates how poetry can entrap, rather than release, past traumas and hardships. Filmed on location at Kenkeleba House Garden in the East Village.
[[Video: An exploration of the Kenkeleba House Garden, an outdoor green space in New York City filled with sculptures by African-American artists, the film begins by coming through the front gate and panning around to view a person (Trace DePass) sitting in the garden, then at the various installations in it. This happens throughout the film, interspersed with shots of the life happening in the neighborhood outside the garden and Trace interacting with the space. The film returns several times to a realistic metal sculpture of a man standing, his next straining to one side and a more abstract sculpture of a figure made out of metal and blue glass.]]
[image: a vertical black-and-white photostrip, like that from a photobooth, in which each frame pictures a small hand with a hospital bracelet on the wrist spelling out a letter from the word “free” in American Sign Language.]
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