...until now. Been in a dry spell for a while, stricken with an unreasonable fear of keyboards and stranded amongst stagnant, broken then taped-together phrases, but the shit has returned to hit the fan(s) once more!

New P.O.O.P.!
"Flip of the Coin" (balances fate and statistics to explain how I like to make banal choices),
"For My 2D Women" (deals with the effects of fairy tales on the male psychological state),
"Fairy Tale" (deals with the effects of fairy tales on the female psychological state),
"Livers for Poems Program" (expresses lust for muses found only at the bottoms of glasses),
"Recession Special" (is a sonnet-based advertisement I wrote for a local liquor store),
Untitled (When she asked) (is the silly truth about exposing someone to alcohol),
"Upstaged" (reprimands poets for being their own audience),
"Divorced" (examines the heart vs. head debate backed by Aristotle's theory of catharsis), and
"Folded" (watches a man sell away reminders of his humanity in an instinctive bid for tasty survival).

New Audibles should be forthcoming next week.

Enjoy!
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Wislawa Szymborska
People on a Bridge (buy)
Translated by Adam Czerniawski

Some poets take time to be discovered by individual readers. What is the fame of today might not turn into interest for certain readers until a lifetime down the road. The name Wislawa Szymborska is synonymous with excellent poetry, though I've never had a taste for her writing until recently. It's not that I ever accused her poems of lacking talent, it's just a right poet - wrong time scenario. Luckily, the time has come when our consciousnesses have collided. Hopefully, after this post, you'll collide with it as well or keep a bookmark as a reminder.

Polish poetry critic Zbigniew Bienkowski called Szymborska's poetry "open to a world of thought" and "anti-intellectual," adding that the poet herself "...has the courage and the luck to indulge in homely, amateur thought." This is not an insult, but it is also far cry from carrying the proper connotation. I believe that the plainness of her language (at least judging by the English translation) and seemingly natural flow of thought is what led to his assessment. Almost every poem in "People on a Bridge," however, beams as an example of what poets do when they set their minds to translating inspiration into words, ideas into designs, blueprints into poems.

( miracles await... )

Emanuel Di Pasquale
Writing Anew (buy)

The new and selected poems in this “Writing Anew” are children of a man I got to know as a professor first and poet only later. His writing is as much personal revelation as it is worldly insight. Aspects forgiving, adoring, and observant decorate pieces that range from pastorals to odes to narratives concerning life and everything in-between.

Exemplary, concise writing lends to the first section, New Poems, a slap in the face to readers who are too occupied with plot to sit and chew. These selections, which rarely waste words, offer a scene with no place to go but inwards. Much like haiku, Di Pasquale has a talent for recognizing images pregnant with meaning and has a rare talent for sculpting said scenes. Abandon all desire for travel and pull out the magnifying glass of these words to examine exactly where it is that you have been placed. Then, when you’ve finally sat down and looked around, repeat it like a mantra one last time from within to feel it.

( come somewhere new and discover yourself there... )

Squiggle D
!? Learning to Fall

There are 16 pages in "!? Learning to Fall," a chapbook by a local poet who goes by the pseudonym Squiggle D, and not one of them should be disregarded. These narratives, which often emulate and exploit the human connectivity of Walt Whitman’s lines, are packed with emotion and, more importantly, words that convey those feelings without saying too much.

Don’t get me wrong, the poems are not perfect. There are clichés and unnecessary language throughout (though certainly not in abundance), but Squiggle D’s attention to story is his strength, which is supplemented by his creative structure and boundless imagination. My favourite thing about his writing is the intensity felt behind words so reserved. It takes talent to accomplish that, and these 16 pages are full of such demonstrations.

( watch and read and love... )

New P.O.O.P.!
"Mite-y Literacy" (an observation of someone reading over something else's shoulders),
"Garden Perception" (a meditation on how, where, and what as we find ourselves),
"Inventory Management" (a personal piece dealing with a gamble on memory),
"Father, Welder" (a recollection and fiction juxtaposing the innocence of a child and the accumulated bigotry of its father), and
"Skin Deep" (a love song for anorexics).

Moulded P.O.O.P.:
"Stay" has been modified ever so slightly. See if you notice the differences.

New Audibles!
"Malicious Limericks #1-9" (death, murder, and more via light-hearted limericks),
"Skin Deep,"
"Father, Welder,"
"Inventory Management,"
"Garden Perception," and
"Mite-y Literacy."

Enjoy!
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Tony Gruenewald
The Secret History of New Jersey (buy)

Concerning poetic output, Tom House once noted that "now and again / a good one learns / laughter." Living in New Jersey, one needs a good sense of humour partly because, as a resident, you and your state are always being laughed at and, as the collective butts of jokes, "we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh" (Friedrich Nietzsche). Fully aligned with the message of this pairing is a homegrown poet, Tony Gruenewald, whom I met years and years ago and taught me by example that poetry can be funny, poignant, and obscenely beautiful.

( Next exit, laughter... )

Sarah Morgan
Animal Ballistics (buy via PayPal or Amazon).

The number of people putting pen to paper is great, those with talent are fewer, and those with talent and enthusiasm for performance are even more scarce. And while this may be said of any area where the notion of performance may be entertained, it is rare I lavish such compliments on poets who appear at slams. I have nothing against slamming. I think it's a wonderful venue the same way open mics are. The only drawback, akin to that of open mics, is that they're open. And most people, as stated above, are not those with a talent ... much less for concise wording and dense, unapologetically enigmatic comparisons.

Luckily slams, like open mics, usually have features to draw in a crowd. As part of a crowd at Bar 13 in NYC, I witnessed one Sarah Morgan knock a crowd of 1/2 sober people on its collective ass, myself included. Though I had spent all my cash on drinks and the entrance fee, the impression she left on me withstood my sobering and made me recognize her when she appeared again at Loser Slam in Long Branch, NJ. It was there I was knocked over a second time and committed to buying a book. I am eternally grateful in the way anyone who has ever purchased a book or memorizes a poem honours its author.

( Read more... )

New P.O.O.P.!
"Affirmation Grunt" (where cavemen show us how science ruins magic and with it the appreciation of reality) and
"Stay" (an expression of longing for more time with your lover).

Moulded P.O.O.P.:
"Spring mantra" an "An Apology Written in Shit" have both been modified ever so slightly. See if you notice the differences.

New Audibles!
"Stay" (see above) and
"Snatch Trap" (new recording of an old favourite)
"Our Separate Months" (calendars as excuses),
"An Apology Written in Shit" (a better recording, ironically more audible),
"Spring mantra" (a better recording, ironically more audible), and
"Resist Procrastinate, Linger, Relish" (laments of waking, dream loss).

Enjoy!
---ink---

P.S. Since my new site comes with unlimited data storage/transfer, I'm creating a new page, the Audibles Archive, so never again will you have to grow weary of seeing the same 6 poems on the Audibles page; everything I've ever posted to the new site will now be available there (upon every update after this one).

Read poems, listen to poems, buy books of poems, look at some feeble attempts at art!

Ink's Blot v3.0 is fully functional!

I am officially freed from the shackles of Geocities and have uber benefits like unlimited file transfer/storage, direct selling, and offline design tools.

I recently found out that the service provider (SP) that hosts my website (geocities.com) will be shutting down. Luckily, another SP is available for dummies like me who know little-to-nothing of HTML, and I signed up and got a fantastic URL!!! I now own/rent www.inksblot.com!!!

I spent a large portion of today re-creating my website. Many pages are still unavailable, but the fundamentals - POOP, Audibles, and Books pages - are operational. When I get back home to my regular computer, I can transfer all necessary files and fully boot my new site. But for now, I'm still etching out the basic pages and adding in what content I can. A major improvement, I can now integrate PayPal buttons instead of forwarding people to my MySpace page! Yay! Buy my books, people!

I plan on making some drastic changes later on (better tools are available now), but for now there's a slightly re-designed Audibles page, those PayPal buttons for each book, and www.inksblot.com instead of geocities.com/inkyscribbles. Sooooooooo much better. So don't forget to change your bookmarks. Geocities.com/inkyscribbles will be terminated by the end of this month.

Best,
---ink---

New P.O.O.P.!
"Spring mantra" (a prayer for recognition of humans as sexually driven beasts),
"Archaic" (a reflection on how the loss of mediums can prevent access to art), and
"An Apology Written in Shit" (a poem showing the end of a relationship due to a misunderstanding).

NEW Audibles!!!
"Spring mantra" (see above) and
"An Apology Written in Shit" (see above).

Don't get too excited, though. The mic I used to record these audibles sucked, and I don't have access to a better one righ now. They will get re-recorded, but, for now, crank up the volume so you can hear.

Enjoy!
---ink---

In honour of the past holiday-turned-booze-fest, the folks over at Loser Slam hosted a limerick-showdown. I've always liked limericks. They're bouncy, they're usually bawdy, and they're usually quite funny. In an exchange with a fellow poet, it was relayed to me that she was usually not funny and would thusly have a tough time writing material for this slam. That sounded like a challenge to me. After all, bawdy is easy, right? What about trying to write some disturbing and/or sensitive limericks? Procrastinating until the last possible minute (of course), I picked up the gauntlet and threw down with the following:

( get your hands ruddy )

Hello friends and lovers. I hope you're all ready for some new P.O.O.P.

This installation brings you a revision of "Surrender," my favourite panty poem, as well as 4 new little turds:

"User!" (which pits artisans against engineers),
"Adultery" (which examines jealousy over child),
an untitled piece ("If flesh of one hand froze solid") - which brings mental masturbation to new heights, and
"Our Separate Months" (which uses calenders to defend effort and the lack thereof in relationships).

In other news, I'm adding a third book to those I'm currently compiling/writing. A concept volume of poetry, segmented in 2 parts. More to be revealed as it comes. Also, some may have noticed there hasn't been an audio update in almost a year! I plan to remedy this. Much needs voicing, and as soon as time stops for a while, I'll be able to record some new tracks for those who enjoy listening to these words.

Lastly, I have been reading much. And two books I'd love to recommend to all are Sarah Lindsay's "Twigs & Knucklebones" and Stephanie Brown's "Domestic Interior." A book that should be shunned (or at least given the indignity of ignoring until found on used paperback), however, is Billy Collins' "Ballistics." Reviews are in the works and will be up ... relatively shortly.

Dub vs. Sub: Translation as the Definitive Neo-Noir Element in Speed Grapher

Noir is hard to pin down as a genre, because most critics only selectively agree, collectively, on exactly what it is that comprises the style. Also, certain films carry the weight of noir without exhibiting any of the specific elements previously conferred upon. This lends to a know-it-when-you-see-it mentality more often than not applied to general mood in movies that “dealt with the kinds of tragedies, scandals, and duplicities that bordered on their audience’s everyday experiences and that appeared regularly in tabloids” (Grant 224). And if you’re looking to define noir through any specific distinction in Speed Grapher, it’s all between the lines...literally. Cool your heels on the sub vs. dub debate and indulge in both to discover that the translation of the dialog/monologs is what defines Speed Grapher’s sense of noir.

( Read on to see how the American translation makes Speed Grapher noir. )

Matthea Harvey
Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (buy).

"Show, don't tell" serves as the general rallying cry for poetry, that which distinguishes itself from prose by using the best words in the best order with minimal reader hand-holding. Reading poetry is how people discover they are self-realized readers, able to reach and accept their own understandings and lack there of for what they are, interpretation, and stand confidently behind those thoughts.

Poetry, though, is tricky in that it is one of the few writing forms that constantly seeks to renew itself in the name of originality. The standard of poetry has changed much across chronology as well as geography. From lyrics and soothsayers to free verse and cubists, poetry has always strived to make something more out of form (or lack thereof) than what came before. This constant reinvention can make for some pretty high hurdles for casual adventurers in reading.

Matthea Harvey's "Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form," is one such hurdle - a book so dense and intentionally/intelligently misguiding that it forces a need for concentration upon the reader. This is no casual read. This is poetry at a pinnacle, and Matthea Harvey issues with it an invitation to dig into the words the way only this particular art from can make at once challenging and rewarding through technique as well as the words themselves.

( continue reading... )

Well, actually, I do, 'cause I've got

New P.O.O.P.!

"Surrender" (a pondering of what exposed panty lines really means),
"writer's block, a self-imposed delirium" (an IM-inspired improvisation),
an untitled piece (concerning my love affair with wine), and
"Post-Parted Vow" (an empathetic journey into the mind of a man at his wife's funeral).

Enjoy!
---ink---

Greetings readers. I've not forgotten you. Nor have I forsaken my muse. Short on time and even shorter on inspiration, I've been swallowed by distractions. But that was before I discovered Rockin' Joes, a coffee house that opened not three miles from my abode. It's not open late, but it does afford me a place to go out and read ... and write!

Aside from my creative output, I've started writing essays on anime for Ani-Gamers.com. A copy of my first attempt is in the post that precedes this one. Writing analytically (albeit poorly), has re-awoken my lust for academic writing. So expect more essays (hopefully of improving quality) to be appearing here and on Ani-Gamers.com in the future.

When is an anime not an anime? When it’s a Gothic novel:
a deconstruction of Cossette no shozo (Le Portrait de Petite Cossette).

Like most things, the idea of Gothic has undergone an evolution. What originally started out as a term used to identify a barbaric Germanic tribe came to describe a specific style of European architecture and then became synonymous with written tales of horror and the fantastic in England and the USA. Given the visual nature of human-kind, it is not surprising that the mediums of construction and text could accept visual media as a blended brother. Furthermore, with the amount of communication and information readily available to any interested party in the current era, it is not surprising that what was once isolated has become global. With that global availability and the like-mindedness of human nature, the cross-culture adaptation of genres was inevitable (you’re reading an essay about a Japanese Anime, based on European tradition, as fawned over by a citizen of the USA after-all).

Shojo-style anime and Gothic tales seem like brothers separated at birth in the respect that both have been considered intellectually lighter mediums that address issues of romance and the fantastic. However, where the “Gothic novel is a romance typically written as a long prose horror narrative that exhibits...qualities of doom and gloom as well as an emphasis on chivalry and magic,” a typical shojo anime is a romance typically written as a dramatic/comedic narrative stressing the humility and awkwardness of personal expression with an emphasis on a wealth of emotional frustration (Bedford, 149). Cossette no shozo, directed by Akiyuki Shinbo and adapted for the screen by Mayori Sekijima, is a brilliant blending of both forms in that it forsakes everything inherently shojo, save the style of animation, in favor of telling a true Gothic tale in relation to its devices, characters, and settings/images.

( continue reading )

Welcome to the Dodge House



Poetry can be a hit to the gut, a whisper in the ear, or an acid flashback and most likely all three at once or one time or another. Yes, the 2008 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival happened two weekends ago, but it’s a lot to take in, a lot to process, and even more to relay to those that were not present.

I’ll just take you through my days there - events, discussions, readings - and offer up my opinions, impressions, and insights. Regretting not going to this wonderful event, I leave up to you, dear reader.

( Take a walkthrough of the house that Dodge built. )

New P.O.O.P.!

"Forget-Me-Knots" (a reflection on emotional chains from relationship leftovers) and
"Resist, Procrastinate, Linger, Relish" (a lost battle of determination vs. dreaming).

Also, the previously posted, untitled piece finally found its name, "Hand Over Heart." Reread it, because it wants you to. And don't ignore the others either. I can hold back their jealousy only so long.

Enjoy!
---ink---