Scott Foran

Writers Studio: What writers have influenced you the most?

Scott Foran: There have been a number of authors who have had a great impact on me. As far as fiction is concerned, I would have to point to Franz Kafka and Flannery O’Connor. Both of these writers believed in challenging the realities accepted by their respective readers. I have certainly been influenced by their particular narrative styles; however, I am most affected by their desire to look beyond the surface of existence, to explore the nature of humanity and to bring readers face-to-face with truth (no matter how seemingly unwelcome it might be). In the area of poetry, I would, without hesitation, point toward Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath as primary influences—their use of imagery, language, and sound has greatly impacted my own efforts.

WS: What motivates you to keep on writing?

SF: Getting published is a great motivating factor—there is nothing quite like seeing your name in print. I think, though, that I would continue with my work even if I never had another poem or story appear in a publication. The real driving force is something that may, in fact, prove to be a little more pathological: I have to tell stories. There is always an inner pressure to communicate, an urge that will only be satisfied by sitting down and putting something to paper.

WS: Which genre do you enjoy most and why?

SF: I find myself equally drawn to fiction (both novels and short stories) and poetry. This is true both for my own writing and for my reading preference. As far as reading goes, however, I am drawn to the canonical, what most would consider “the classics.” I find that modern writers have become far too influenced by our quick-paced TV generation. I would much rather sit and warm up to a story as it gently unfolds than have it delivered to me in visual bytes.

WS: What is your favorite book?

SF: My all-time favorite novel is Franz Kafka’s The Trial. Although this novel was never formally finished, I think it a marvelous snapshot of the modern condition of the human race.

WS: What books do you think everyone should read?

SF: This is actually a question I’ve thought a lot about. I am often asked by my students what I would recommend, so I have developed a “Top 10” list—in alphabetical order by title:

The Bible
Candide by Voltaire
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Divine Comedy by Dante
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O’Connor
The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Trial by Franz Kafka

WS: What is your favorite quotation?

SF: My favorite quotation is one that appears on every issue of the Writers Studio newsletter: “I admire anybody who has the courage to write anything at all.” --E.B. White

POETRY:

“a moment caught” Pipes and Tobacco Magazine, Spring 2006
“light” Portfolio North, 2000
“worlds apart” Portfolio North, 2000
“genesis” Free Zone Quarterly, Spring 2000
“prophet” Free Zone Quarterly, Spring 2000
“this” PW Review, Spring 2000
“note well this path” PW Review, Spring 2000
“new world” Portfolio North, 1999
“freedom suite” Portfolio North, 1999
“without you is forever” (this) Poetry Magazine, Winter 1999
“mirror of sands” (this) Poetry Magazine, Winter 1999
“in a moment’s pace” (this) Poetry Magazine, Winter 1999

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES:

“Welcome to the Studio,” Evince, August 2006
“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Opens Sept. 1,” The News and Record, South Boston, VA, August 7, 2006
“Little Theatre to Present Classic C.S. Lewis Tale,” The Gazette-Virginian, South Boston, VA, August 7, 2006
“Little Theatre Tackles Shakespeare...Sort of,” News & Record, South Boston, VA, June 8, 2006
“Little Theatre Abbreviates the Bard,” The Gazette-Virginian, South Boston, VA, June 7, 2006
“Little Theatre’s Holiday Show: It’s The Christmas Classic,” The Gazette-Virginian, South Boston, VA, December 7, 2005
“Christmas Carol: A True Holiday Classic,” News & Record, South Boston, VA, December 5, 2005

WRITING CONTESTS:

“Silent Night” Honorable Mention, Short Fiction, CSUC Creative Writing Contest, 1996

the glass cracks across

the face now wizened
the gaze now wry but still not wise
he hears the distant muted shout
of a mother’s pride
at the tottering steps of his youth
but shudders as the shadow of those stumblings
keeps stride with the tattered thoughts
that roar against the night
deafened visions of reel upon reel of silent
film once black and white now yellowed
as if a sickly sun were shining palely from behind
jaundiced memories
that are almost beyond the limits
of recollection
bright bursts of light
pepper through like gunbursts
or blossoms of white blood
swiftly filling the frames
until the clack clack clack
of the film’s tail slapping the projector announces
almost prematurely the end

origin of consciousness

the purpled fold of fingers
clutched too tightly
is set in contrast
to the whitened wash of faces
whose eyes, worn blank
from days of suffering the labors
of a fever-silenced form,
roll loosely in contemplative orbits
to poise adeptly on the door
on the clouded window, the well-bleached linen,
the glass of water untouched
as whispers rush
to cleanse the room
homilies to lives now paused
before the yellowed presence of beyond
afraid to tip the sands again
in motion lest
they forget

a moment caught

unawares
tintype of memory
cast in amber relief
a tableau of retrospect
three forms seated
round the bluing stone
chimney wrapped protectively
round the pregnancy of fire
as darkness throws the clay of
faces, hands
to stick like potter’s cherubs
against the night
humble brierwoods
curled folklike from the mouths
as a litany of smoke and laughter
slowly lifts
to argue the cosmogony of
a moment caught
 

a crowd is untruth

a passion of voices
collides on the street
like fruit in harvest baskets
mute movements are necessary
while thoughts engorge
on life that swells
for an hour more, perhaps two
and at the crescending moment
before the flood of darkness
that swallows the living
it is crushed
pulped
essence to be saved
for a day of celebration
or requiem (keening)
 

Like Chocolate Driven
by S.M. Foran

Students of history will agree that assigning blame for any single event is a disagreeably complex issue, and this complexity is certainly not limited to moments of great national significance. A simple childhood memory can prove to be just as difficult to decipher as a global calamity—a small boy, for instance, his nose bloodied and limbs trembling in frustration—who is to blame?

In the more reflective moments of adulthood, could this boy accuse his own parents of criminal negligence, the endangerment of their own child? Perhaps the finger of reproach should first be thrust into the shadows of the past, however, at the mighty Hernán Cortés bouncing over the bright Atlantic in his Spanish carrack, its hold bursting with the first fruits of European colonization: the cacao pod. Can you not see his wide and easy conquistador smile set to the wind as he races back to civilization with an intoxicating recipe that would sweep wildly through the kingdoms of a continent, a chocolate drink that would set even the most holy of knees to trembling at the mere anticipation of its forbidden pleasure? But, this would be too simple a solution. What about the British confectioners, Fry & Sons, who developed the first bars of chocolate for 19th Century consumption? Could they not also be held accountable? Or the Swiss chocolatier, Daniel Peter, who discovered the power of combining milk and cocoa powder? Is he not to bear some responsibility for making this overpowering Aztec elixir palatable for the masses?

Culpability for the driving force of this childhood tragedy must be established. Justice must somehow be served. Imagine, if you will, a sunny lakeside meadow, a picnickers delight peppered with the shapes of blankets and baskets and families bent devotedly over legs of chicken and buckets of yellowed potato salad. A pudgy-faced lad of six or seven stands spraddle-footed over the frayed corner of an orange afghan, his very being quivering in expectancy as a dark bar of chocolate is passed reverently from hand to hand until it is finally snatched out of the summer air and clutched tightly to his chest. A triumphant chortle escapes the boy as he turns and examines the mellowed richness of the candy’s earthy hue, then lifts the corner of the chocolate bar slowly to his mouth for a tentative nibble. Despite the roundness of his appearance, the boy exhibits an unusual amount of self-control. He does not rush the chocolate—without quite knowing why, he respects the ancient power of the sweet confection, somehow sensing that it is special, unable yet to articulate the centuries of cultural significance attached to the primal force of the cacao.

And so the boy stands, completely absorbed, unaware of an immediate threat to the almost sacred nature of his occupation, a roguish herd of antlered thugs pacing the edges of the meadow, their clever brown eyes flashing in the midday light, their hooves impatiently pawing furrows in the warm earth. These ill-bred creatures of the forest had long ago grown accustomed to the presence of people, and they had developed the distasteful habit of demanding payment from those who would picnic upon the grassy knoll, holding blanketfulls of innocents hostage until a ransom of tidbits had been dutifully surrendered. Those who foolishly thought they could avoid the furred highwaymen had found themselves on the receiving end of the swift and terrible law of the wild and had fled to the safety of their suburban homes, all the while nursing harsh-colored bruises as a reminder of their near-fatal scrape with the rawness of nature.

The boy stands in a corpulent burst of rapture as he reverently tastes the corner of his chocolate bar, and he is only vaguely conscious of a blur of movement at the extreme edges of his vision. Working off of some predetermined signal, the herd divides itself and flanks across the grass in an attempt to completely surround the boy, however, some slight noise—a scuff of turf, a snorting of dust, the slice of an antler through the balmy air—arouses the boy’s attention. His gaze lifts above the surface of the candy bar in an exaggerated and agonizing motion that distends the muscles of his face into an elongated chocolate-smeared scream, his eyes popping at the sight of the quadruped ruffians bearing down on him.
With only the slightest genuflection of the dimpled knees, the boy launches across the grass in a dead run toward the family sedan parked at the edge of the picnic area, the chocolate bar gripped tightly in one hand, but he is not swift enough. As his toes pivot into the floor of the meadow, propelling him forward, step by step, he feels the very air thicken, until it seems that he is pressing his body through an invisible blanket and he realizes, with a start, that the herd is upon him.

The boy hears his heart drumming rhythmically in his ears as the deer nudge by him, on the left and on the right, and, as they encircle him, he senses that the drumming is not merely the sound of his own frantic blood, but the pummeling of hooves upon the turf, and he finds himself pinched tightly between the trembling flanks of the towering, rawboned beasts. Curling the fist that still clutches the chocolate into the protective hollow of his chest, the boy thrusts his body against the rippling wall of brown, hoping to squeeze through, into the clear, but manages, as luck would have it, to trip one of his pursuers. The pace of the gnashing herd falters for a few precious moments as the deer stumble and try to regain the impassioned cadence of their stride, but it is enough to allow the boy to pull slightly ahead.

And, once clear of the pack, it is as if the boy has slipped the very wings of Mercury upon his feet, the pudgy pistons of his legs thrusting him closer and closer to his goal, until he finally grips the searing metal of the door handle with the fingers of his free hand. With little thought, except for the relative safety of the rear seat of the sedan, the boy scrambles inside and collapses, breathless, upon the sticky heat of the leather. He squishes his eyelids together and listens to the labored sound of his own lungs collapsing and inflating, then jolts upright as the herd, unable to correct its enraged momentum, bounces off the side panels of the sedan like oversized hailstones—bam, bam, thud, BAM!

And it is then that the boy realizes, with a shocking paralysis of horror, that he failed to close the car door behind him. As the quivering terror of this thought settles upon him, the herculean head of a young stag, devilish knobs protruding from its scalp, suddenly appears, issuing a few tentative snorts, and, before the boy can even thrust a protective arm in front of him, he is caught in a dervish of flailing hooves that knocks the chocolate bar to the littered floor of the sedan. The boy quickly pulls his legs up on the seat and wraps himself in a bitter cocoon of defeat, betrayal, and loneliness, his mind now numbed to the sound of chocolate squares being forcefully folded into a cud of meadow grass.

As the boy’s shoulders slouch forward in a silent tremor of weeping, the body of the automobile gently rocks between the pressing haunches of the milling herd, and the lad’s face takes on the distant look of a disappointed conqueror.