S. Scott Whitaker's Blog, page 6
June 15, 2016
Guess who leads off AvantAppal(achia) latest issue? That's right, moi. #iamwriting #avantgarde # poetry
Two of my syllabic experimental poems kick off the first issue of AvantAppal(achia). One captures the sound of trees in wind, the other curates a variety of sounds.
June 13, 2016
May 13, 2016
Guess whose #poem kicks off @GrubStreetTU 65th Ish? "After Being Released from #Prison, #Brazil" Woop!
How cool is that? Opening a lit mag's set? Especially Grub Street, regional & national...A first for me.
Originally written during a quotidian project, the final draft was winnowed from almost two and a half pages.
May 1, 2016
#Tiresias Poems, "Working for the Oracle" are included in new #pagan #fairytale #folktales #nurseryrhymes anthology #Iamwriting
The "Tiresias Poems" from All My Rowdy Friends are featured in this anthology about myth and magic, folklore and legend. You can read about it and buy it here.
April 25, 2016
"Children Love the Dumps" an #ecopoem up on #GoodMenProject #iamwriting #iamreading #formalpoetry #lyricpoetry
This month the Good Men Project have one of my poems up: Children Love the Dumps, which is also featured in the United Kingdom's oldest literary magazines: Oxford Poetry, which you can purchase here.
April 2, 2016
March 31, 2016
Crazy mom kidnaps granddaughter for baptism. New #flashfiction from @SScottWhitaker in Vagabonds Anthology of the Mad Ones. #Iamwriting #Iamreading
My flash fiction story, "In Some Northern Town" appears in this month's Vagabonds: Anthology of the Mad Ones. The story is about a mother who kidnaps her daughter's child to baptize the baby. The story is told from the POV of children who happened to be at the christening when the mother was arrested. It takes place in the future, in the world of the stream. You can read it here.
Another streamworld story was published earlier this year here. Empty Oaks published The Play's The Thing, about a young woman named March Hayes who meets a mysterious man at an underground Shakespeare play. Shakespeare, is banned in the future, and the language moves March, and the audience to break the law and risk treason.
Stream, a collection of these stories can be viewed here.
March 28, 2016
#Alpine Strangers covers Winter Fever from #AllMyRowdyFriends #Poetry #MondayBlogs #Iamwriting #Iamreading
I owe the Alpine Strangers a kickass dinner for all the work they have done on All My Rowdy Friends, my first perfect bound collection of poetry from Punks Write Poems Press, out of Chesterfield, VA.
One of the books themes is sickness, and this little poem, though only a few lines long, has an expansive sensory galaxy of associations. The Alpine Strangers tapped into some of those sensory associations for your listening pleasure.
You can buy All My Rowdy Friends here, and here. You can like my Facebook author page here.
Electronic versions of my chapbooks are available through Amazon. You can also contact me about purchasing chapbooks from me directly.
March 26, 2016
#BatmanVSuperman is made for #Fanboys and #Fangirls. Re-thinking the negative hype. Critics should chill & #BenAffleck knocked it out of the park
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is a mess, but don’t get sucked up into the negative criticism hype. This movie is for fan boys and girls, not critics, and much of the movie (it’s not a film...Batman Begins was a film, The Dark Knight was a...you get it) is ripped from video games, or graphic novels, and thrown into a blender. It is a comic book movie and capitalist hype machine, and though it is getting bashed, it really isn’t any better or worse than Avengers Age of Ultron, or Iron Man 2, or The Amazing Spider Man I & 2, Spiderman 3, or Thor: Dark World, or etc, etc, etc. The critics are exhausted with nerd culture, because nerd culture has taken over the entertainment world. The summer has been the traditional season of superhero flicks, and Batman V Superman is akin to Walmart putting out the swimsuits in March. And this event, as everyone knows, is just one stone in a long road of Marvel, and DC, not to mention Star Wars and Jurassic Park films to endure. I imagine critics looking at the calendar of comic book sci-fi films to come and groaning into their instant latte.
What separates this mess from a Marvel mess is tone and levity. The Christopher Nolan produced Man of Steel, and Batman V Superman borrow from Nolan’s Batman trilogy, in terms of tone. Serious, earnest, troubled, brooding. Sepia tones. Noir. That’s okay for most fan boys and girls. The tone of both comics have been trending dark, because that’s what sells. Consider one of the best Superman story lines in the last decade: Red Son. A must read. What if Superman were Russian. What if Superman ruled the world? Which is one of the themes explored in BVS. Here, DC trumps Marvel by getting to the Superheroes are dangerous and should be regulated plot first. Though, the Civil War movie looks to be as busy and packed as BVS, honestly. Like how many superheroes can be packed into a film and still have like adult dialogue? We will find out.
How the plot is delivered is where the movie falls flat. The stuffed film makes leaps like a video game narrative. Sure, there is plot holes. Many, many plot holes. But it almost doesn’t matter. I found the Batman imagery refreshing and familiar. The Wayne Mansion looks like a burnt out husk left over from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Snyder focuses on falling pearls to reinforce Batman’s anguish over his parents--which beats Wayne visiting the street where his family was killed, or family portraits, or other ways the Dark Knight has brooded over his dead parents.
Ben Affleck delivers what many Batman fans have longed for. Frank Miller’s Dark Knight. An aged, war weary Batman who isn’t afraid of guns, or torture. Affleck is the first actor to really embody the physicality of the character. Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney, and Bale are all too small and narrow to be Bruce, who is a freaking Viking. Affleck looks like he stepped out of the Batman video games of the last decade, and so does the action. He jumps around with the dexterity of Spiderman, and clings up in corners, rather than just hanging out on rooftops. In one fight scene, Batman’s combos top any fight scene previously filmed in the Batman franchises. The vehicles are Nolan reminiscent, and thankfully Snyder doesn’t give us a tech gadget orgasm scene where someone mansplains the weapons and gadgets and responsibility needed to wield them, etc. Instead Snyder has Alfred working on them and drinking tea. Just like in comics. My fav Alfred is currently Sean Pertwee on Gotham,btw.
Everyone else is entertaining. The visuals were crisp and vivid, and the dream sequence Mad Max Batman kicked much ass. Why hasn’t that movie been made?
Henry Cavill isn’t given much to do, but he looks the part. And that’s half the battle with Superman. Like Batman it requires a physical presence to fill the role.
And Wonder Woman? I love Wonder Woman. I grew up with Linda Carter’s Wonder Woman and vividly remember playing Wonder Woman with friends at age 4. Gal Gadot knocks it out of the park. But really, we should have had more of her.
What the critics are complaining about boils down to Zack Snyder’s film-making which is entirely influenced by graphic novels, video-games, and music videos. I don’t care for his busy style, but plenty of people will. Why does Jonathan Kent appear as a ghost? Because it happens in the comics. Why does Batman have weird dreams that don’t make any sense? Because it happens in the comics. BTW, on the dreams: Snyder opens the film with a trippy dream sequence. He sets up the audience expectations for weird trippy dreams in the first five minutes and critics be like: hey, where did the Mad Max Batman come from? Etc, etc.
I didn’t buy Gotham across the water from Metropolis either, but my kids know this is true from the Lego Batman video games, and other sources, etc. I’m willing to let that one go by: I always thought Gotham was Boston to Metropolis’ New York. Or better Metropolis is Chicago for our corn fed and raised Kent reporter to be.
My kids loved BVS. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. And as far as cinema goes, are the plot holes and lack of out of the box thinking really any worse than JJ Abrams recycling the Death Star again, or Marvel bringing yet another Spider Man to the screen? Nope. Not at all. Turn off your brain and enjoy the bodies hurling across the screen.
March 20, 2016
#AlpineStrangers remixes "Pretty Boys Make Gotham Graves" an adult #Batman #poem for #comicbook fans
For those of you who like to sample what you read before you buy:
Alpine Strangers, pod casting duo Nate McFadden and Cody Grimm, are releasing tracks they have interpreted. They're great, and it was giddy fun waiting to see what they had come up with. For all of you writer folks out there, I recommend working with them. Poetry, in particular, is a vocal medium. It is meant for audio consumption. You can purchase the book here.
Check em out here.
Today's poem is a what if: Fetish Batman. Conceived of in Boston, 1997. Lost, revised, redone. Lost again. This version is probably like version 12.4, or something
