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Gorelets: Unpleasant Poems

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Overview

In its initial incarnation, gorelets.com was the home of Michael Arnzen's weekly series, "Gorelets: Unpleasant Poetry." The series was an experiment in delivery and form, as poems were written on -- and designed to be read upon -- a handheld computer each and every week. PDA users worldwide subscribed to the service. Collectible postcard versions were also released weekly to patrons who donated cash to support the development of the project, whose ultimate goal was to bring attention to poetry in the e-book community. Poems are the perfect content for the small screen size and portability of the handheld computer and other ebook reading devices. But, bafflingly, there is a lack of poetry available in that form. Gorelets was an attempt to correct that.

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Author Information

Bio of Michael A. Arnzen

Michael A. Arnzen won the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award for his novel, Grave Markings, in 1995. He teaches creative writing at Seton Hill University, located outside of Pittsburgh, where he now resides with his wife Renate and several cats. His poetry has appeared everywhere in the genre press over the past decade. His poetry books include Freakcidents, Sportuary, Dying, Chew, and Writhing in Darkness. A new collection of a hundred short-short stories, entitled 100 Jolts, will appear in 2004 from Raw Dog Screaming Press. E-book versions of his work are distributed through Fictionwise.com. Double-Dragon's edition of Arnzen's GORELETS: Unpleasant Poems features 21 bonus poems unavailable elsewhere...not even in the print edition from Fairwood Press. Arnzen also contributed a chapbook's worth of work to Double-Dragon Publishing's hardcover book, Cemetery Poets Grave Offerings in 2003. Other DDP anthology appearances to date include Of Flesh and Hunger and Scary! Holiday Tales to Make You Scream.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Double Dragon Publishing

Filesize

583.71 KB

Number of Pages

64

eBook ISBN

9781554040865

Awards

  • Bram Stoker Awards

Excerpt from: Gorelets by Michael A. Arnzen

Introduction

These poems -- like all poems -- were an experiment.

What distinguishes these texts is the way they were written and the way they were intended to be read on a portable handheld computer, or "PDA," like the popular Palm Pilot. Whenever the urge struck, the poet composed on a 3" x 3" screen with a stylus. Consequently, no poem here is longer than eleven lines and each of those lines contains no more than eight words, at best. Brevity and word economy was the rule. But if you study them, unique structures and patterns will emerge. The medium certainly shaped the message.

As did the genre. Gorelets are "horror" poems a mode of writing which explores the "dark side" and muses over morbid themes like death, murder, disease, mutation, chaos, mutilation, the uncanny and all things outrý. This is the genre I work in, mostly because I believe it is the most experimental popular genre. In it, one expects the unexpected, which requires the writer to break with convention at every turn.

Tapping into the popularity of the fiction genre, horror also brings a new audience to poetry. That was part of my goal to get more readers in the digital age to take notice of poetry. When I began this project I realized that e-books were everywhere, but nowhere was poetry. And poetry just seemed to "fit" the screen better than long, eternally scrolling documents written for print rather than pixels.

Gorelets were like applets -- tiny computer applications -- only darker than the usual fare. I think these pieces hold up rather well considering each one fits on a screen the size of gauze bandage. The "Extra Unpleasantness" poems in the bonus have been added especially for the e-book edition of this text -- enjoy.

So read and bleed. They'll be quick jabs, but I hope nothing will clot the cut.

-- Michael Arnzen, Halloween 2003