Compatible Aspects of the Disparate Endeavor
Felino A. Soriano
About the Author
Felino A. Soriano (B. 1974) was a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities. In 2010, he was chosen for the Gertrude Stein "rose" prize for creativity in poetry from Wilderness House Literary Review. Philosophical studies collocated with his connection to various idioms of jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. For information, including his 40 print and electronic collections of poetry (most recently Differences of the Parallel Devotion, Desperanto, 2011), over 2,500 published poems, interviews, and editorships.
From the Introduction
"How does one find harmony in an unequal endeavor? This is the question that Felino A. Soriano places before us in the title of his collection Compatible Aspects of the Disparate Endeavor. In this case the “disparate endeavor” is to find a relatable face within the painted lines and ink markings of paintings that, for the general layman, are faceless."
—Billy Burgos, poet/illustrator and radio show host
ISBN 978-0-9832747-2-8
64 pages
$14.95
5.5" x 8.5" perfect bound, paper
Reviews
"There has always been a deep harmony honestly beating beneath the bruised sunrise/sunset splattered canvasses of Soriano’s poems. His words offer a moving familiarity without ever being predictable or factitious in conception. His images are mutable, not unlike the collisional elements that one might find in the hollowed out galaxy of a kaleidoscope.
In Compatible Aspects of the Disparate Endeavor, Soriano’s vision driven poetry colludes with the pulsing surfaces of several contemporaneous paintings, until insatiable curiosity draws both the writer and the reader into the fathomless interior world of the painting itself. This symbiotic Stendhal Syndrome allows a full forensic analysis of the merged body, the heart which propels the art itself, the mind which the eye fecundates. This allows for a full absorption of ideas which promote a continuous growth that starts inside both poet/artist and witness/reader; a visceral communion, an epistemological closure, where heart and mind are joined in a scrupulously controlled passion play.
It is through sheer virtue of Soriano’s sensitivity, inventiveness, and fierce inner freedom, that this intoxicating, paradoxical pleasure is achieved."
—William Crawford, author of Fire in the Marrow
"There are not many out there who work as hard as Felino, His dedication is seen as a prize fighter battling through punch drunk words, assembling them with the mind of a mad hatter. They easily fall in front of his brain and chosen in a swift caress that only he seems to encapsulate. In these cities of 'shit and wannabe' Felino is a breath of fresh air."
—Frank Reardon, author of Interstate Chokehold
"The language in this book is innovative and fresh. Each poem is a stroke of well-crafted ekphrastic genius. Every line is pregnant with a creative calliopean voice: a revival of the sacred-authentic poetry. This project emends the notion that contemporary poetry is unsustainable. Everyone should be reading Felino A. Soriano’s work."
—Serena Tome, poet and coeditor of Differentia Press
"Felino Soriano has evolved his own vernacular. Teeming with abstractions and laced with what I can only term a stoical lyricism, his labyrinthian language challenges readers to confront their own ideas about poetry’s sometimes tenuous place in the modern world. At the same time, Soriano’s ekphrastic poems boldly if somewhat vertiginously challenge our notions of how we might approach visual art interpretation. He causes us to look at familiar painters in a new light and unfamiliar ones in unexpected ways. His poetry is at once impenetrable and accessible, for through the medium of his idiosyncratic phrasing, he invites us to forego rigid intellectualizing and simply “exist” in the poems. These are enigmatic and beautiful."
—Alison Ross, publisher and editor, Clockwise Cat