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
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