Gloom Cupboard

Biography:

Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974, California), is a case manager and advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults.  He has authored 17 collections of poetry, including “Altered Aesthetics” (ungovernable press, 2009), and “Construed Implications” (erbacce-press, 2009). His poems have appeared at Calliope Nerve, Full of Crow, BlazeVOX, Metazen, Heavy Bear, and elsewhere.  He edits & publishes Counterexample Poetics, www.counterexamplepoetics.com, an online journal of experimental artistry, and Differentia Press, www.differentiapress.com, dedicated to publishing e-chapbooks of experimental poetry.  He is also a contributing editor for Sugar Mule, www.sugarmule.com, and consulting editor for Post: A Journal of Thought and Feeling, www.postjournalofthoughtandfeeling.com. Philosophical studies collocated with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences.  His website explains further: www.felinoasoriano.info/.    

Five essential questions:

1) How did you arrive at the point of combining so much disciplines of the art: which ones, how did it grow and why?

My assumption here is that you are referring to my current series of poems, “Painters’ Exhalations”, which is an ekphrastic project containing poetic interpretations of various paintings.

This series began on January 2, 2009, and as of today, I have written 702 poems.  The idea was to designate my fascination with paintings into the close proximity which interpretation demands, thereby allowing for the paralleling fashion of poetry to be created from the causational facet of identifying how the paintings affect me

Another brand of art which influences my writing is jazz music.  I always listen to jazz when writing a poem.  This significant act transforms the mind, as the psychology of the music posits an asking of specialized understanding into creating newness of sanctified awareness. 

2) Could you tell us more about your activity in Counterexample Poetics

Counterexample Poetics is my online journal of experimental artistry.  I began the journal in February of 2009, and it is becoming what my original intention envisioned.  I’ve been honored to publish several wonderful artists, including Duane Locke, Constance Stadler, Kane X. Faucher, Kristin Fouquet, Matina Stamatakis, Peter G Res, among several others. 

3) If you have published work, why did you choose that way of publishing? If not, why not?

I will answer this question from both vantage points of poet and editor.  I send my poems to both online and print journals; the majority of my published works have appeared in online journals.  The ease of submitting online is appealing, and it can create opportunity for dialogue to appear in respect to differing methods of writing, publishing, etc. 

Both Counterexample Poetics and Differentia Press are accessible online.  This way of publishing is convenient regarding speed of availability, and being that I publish on a rolling basis, sans any structured schedule of issues, I am allowed to publish works at a rate shunning specific deadlines. 

4) how do you manage? Looking at all your different occupations one is surprised you still have time to write 😉

I have purposely created a routine designed to keep my life surrounded by the passions I find sacred.  These passions are very few, yet, I delve into them deeply enough to conjure a fascination with learning and creating.  Outside of my employment and relational aspects, I incorporate writing, editing, studying philosophy, and listening to jazz into a structured time each evening.  I typically write three poems daily, which takes approximately 15 to 60 minutes to complete. 

5) Favourite authors, poets, books, if you like artists and musicians

I have several favorites in these categories.  Regarding poets, my absolute favorite is Duane Locke; when asked who I read and admire, his is the first name constantly uttered.  Others are Constance Stadler, Pablo Neruda, Peter G Res, Kane X. Faucher, Octavio Paz, Marcia Arrieta, Peter Gizzi, David Wolach, Li Po, Matina Stamatakis, Shila E. Murphy, and others. 

Regarding the importance of jazz in my life, the collocation of music and my writing is quite sacred.  Some favorites are Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Eric Reed, Matthew Shipp, Borah Bergman, Eric Lewis, Wynton Marsalis, Terrence Blanchard, and Herbie Hancock. 

As visiting paintings has become integrally conscious in the aspectual reality of where my poetry is heading, I’ve become aware of the massive and encompassing aspects of the genius of the painter.  Some I look to for life are Vincent Van Gogh, Kim Cogan, Otto Dix, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Missak Terzian, and Purvis Young.   

Poems

Painters’ Exhalations 546

—after Isabel de Jesus’ Staying up for life

Empirical process producing

sedentary mirage, talks

to the self found most relevant

etched into mirror’s crystallized,

colorful rendition. 

 Painters’ Exhalations 550

—after Sonia Gechtoff’s Doors to the Light

Through dual doors

distance modernizing movement

opens westward prose

dictating eyes’ foundational 

memories, such is the philosophy of

teeming pleasure.  Sky

wears azure sleeves with

blackbirds’ cursive contours

on wrist depicting time.  This

though verily alive

ascertains its death

until resurrection blends

subtle reality: doors’ opening mouth

welcome, welcome.

Painters’ Exhalations 583

—after Holly Picano’s Blues

Sadness erupts in

voice ripples on

widening paths of

lake’s widened blade.

Upper portion

near dangling dresses

air hang on threaded rods

weaved in light’s blue vocal

makings.

Sadness states verbalizing

sincerity, though the tongued

surplus erases prior agitation—

honest is the slumping posture

gained by the weight upon

necessary silence

alone contracts from

misunderstandings. 

Painters’ Exhalations 584

—after Francesca Signorelli’s Rugged Disguise

Unfair for various

faces

            finding

adequate formational beauty

                                               lost

among the watchers’ opaque veil.

Their pure nakedness

is the farthest distance

from controllable forms

bodies anticipate as

                                   reassured existence.

As

            to

delve

            one

seeks

                        sympathy

                                               for

                        manufactured

                                               effort.

                                                                                  Yet

                                                                       partial

                                                                                  also

                                                                       whole

acknowledgement

is the musical preference

the body dances to

even within the gray of

saddened

                        definitions.

Painters’ Exhalations 585

—after Ya Li’s Storm Coming

Empty passion of germane unknowing. 

Walking resembles paranoid light

landing only softly, temporary relay

life is abundant prior to dissipation.

Such organized heated fingers as

lightning’s splaying content

highlight’s the gray open mouth

sky becomes as its window

no longer features conceptual

simplicity. 

 Painters’ Exhalations 586

—after Sinisa Saratlic’s Remembrance

Remembrance

is the home child

hides in safely.  Her

running toward open door

pushes psyche into understanding

this is the architecture of

life’s simplistic cultivations. 

Painters’ Exhalations 587

—after Gary Gaicomelli’s Woman with locomotive

She waiting for

arrival’s antiquated happenings.

                        To

remove body from the social context

silence calls upon the resting

body.  Soon

she will look into the glass of see-through

persuasion, witnessing blur’s categorical

speed

            warp the strength of a mountain’s

royal stillness. 

Painters’ Exhalations 664

—after Habib Ayat’s Miles From Home

This often

nonfigurative affirmation

does not entail alienation

for symphony of beckoning birds

finding musical dexterity

among clapping leaves,

applauding with welcome

any bird, silently

landing on

bridge of gnarled,

antiquated arms.  From home

is deliberately foreign,

as in travelling into spiky land,

though the vagabond’s feet show

silk on soles and possession of posture

leaning into easy pardons.  Home is

the moment of now’s circular return.

Now becomes future, as the eye of intellect

returns to the position time recalls as

sacred intuition, allowing for semblance

of physical echoes. 

Painters’ Exhalations 665

—after Slade Roberts’ Inferno

Is the organ’s vision

used for duality’s understanding size and

spatial maturation.  Heat

explains partial

reference:

day:

                        attitude of warm hands

browning blades of grass’ arid portion,

night’s time for elemental shine

becomes alive

beneath blankets of moon’s causational

glare.

Too:

                        as the incomer

wears distance’s draping contours,

the casual pastime into revealing

hidden hands, everything becomes

renamed

                        after

hands form malleable personas

dissipating after newness reshapes

enunciated history. 

Painters’ Exhalations 666

—after Sandy Bostelman’s Blossom

On sidewalk’s

elongated spine of horizontal

stillness, silent pause a sole blossom

peruses onlookers’

drastic unawareness.

Fallible hand of the wind reaches with

indiscernible fingers

setting palm of curved desire

atop blond globe of blossom’s whirling

skull.  Touch occurs, truest touch

between sporadic lovers. 

Afterward

wind drives into architecture

made to instantly dissolve.  Again

this will never occur, will never

glorify a light so brilliant, a human eye

cannot ascertain minuscule bones

its skeleton bequeaths

following consumption of

adequate embrace. 

Painters’ Exhalations 667

—after Angel Matamoros’ La Noche

Whatever breathes here

detonates dualities of

former and beyond fingers of now’s

current recollection.

Biased

to the floating contoured sheet

of immaculate conversation, moon,

her body dynamically cliché

from the poets of romanticized luster,

founding her scent resting

on wrists of oak tree’s paralyzed

stillness.

Night is the shortened fuse

stepped upon by ramblings’

elegant delusion, explosion

mimicking stars

spelling prosaic hymns

for those of the whispering parallel

follow, follow

congregate.

Painters’ Exhalations 668

—after Bryan Dubreuiel’s Red Skies at Night

There is beauty

in the crimson vernacular

when sun’s final word

tells itself in intertwining fashion:

remain

in the brief context of wearing many sounds,

leaving

until the cycle of itself

contains antiquated sameness,

an aged species

returning to his youth

found hiding in echoes

circulating memories. 

Painters’ Exhalations 669

—after Roberta Roll’s Black Seashore

On sand

informing of

fallen pelican plumes,

the white of an innocence

depicting

candle’s silent vertical wave,

iridescent heat

rides into the entering mouth

night unlocks with reverence,

following cyclic devotion

between abandoning heat’s

reclaiming the body’s of worshipping

Ra.  

Painters’ Exhalations 670

—after Charles Ephraim Burchfield’s Evening Sunlight, Winter  

Like dried crust on

                                   slanted

corners of the sleeper’s mouth,

an inversion occurs,

                                   earth’s

within winter’s setting, on time, the

annual proclamation

bringing into vision

                        snow’s

alabaster shed.

During night, graying white

                                               marries

awaiting bridegroom of distance’s

focal declaration.

            An eye

holds centered, pupil-mirror echo

any sight of coldness

                                   glaring

into shapes

another eye cannot properly

ascertain. 

Painters’ Exhalations 671

—after Alice Pike Barney’s The Gold Chair

Holds intertwining silence

of the sitter’s blackened gown.  Her

floral face now fully fortunate,

blossomed into ideological concept

of beauty’s organic folded shape.

To hold her leaning frame.

As wound clocks exact now’s

final time frame.

The slight of her smile

is a kind light

enough to incorporate subintelligitur

among the shadows resting from an all day

exposition.  

Painters’ Exhalations 672

—after Eric Sloane’s Untitled

The barren house

is a mother’s regret.

Child

of star’s bizarre blinking, memory-visit

nightly, dream.

Her outline

rarely more than the shadow of itself,

empty womb of one

dimensional question.

Finding species of willing

to visit, perhaps the winter’s bird

welcomed to feel talons on triangular

skull

near the chimney reengaged with

spewing the spirit of massacred wood

warming rooms of incorporated

absence.

A word from the poet

Differentia Press strives to actively promote and work collaboratively with poets of a subjective poetic spectrum, outlining a stylized brand of writing often paralleling individualized definitions of experimental, esoteric, difficult, philosophical, post-postmodern, avant-garde, and other interpretations of poetics existing outside mainstream showcasing.
www.differentiapress.com

www.felinoasoriano.info
www.counterexamplepoetics.com
www.differentiapress.com