The Silent Oracle

By Stephen Schrum

What good is a silent oracle, we may ask. Then again, what good is consulting an oracle whose advice and prophecy one then ignores?

This is a collection of poems by Phorkyad Acropolis, the performance poet Second Life avatar of Stephen A. Schrum. This collection includes very short works and haiku, along with longer works, some of which have appeared as youtube videos and others have been performed as part of Acropolis/Schrum's poetry performances in the 3D online virtual world of Second Life. The poems themselves veer back and forth from serious to humorous observations of love and life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Schrum
• Release date: May 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301494019

Stephen Schrum

Stephen A. Schrum, PhD, is a theatre director, performance poet, playwright, novelist, graphic novelist, virtual worlds theatre director, and Steampunk maker. Notable past RL (real life) productions include: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (set in 1995) and Macbeth (performed in a cyberpunk style); Moliere’s The Miser (done in period costume) and The Misanthrope (set in the era of Disco); Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis (utilizing both the Japanese dance-drama form Butoh and hallucinatory soundscapes that Schrum created). With the research area of “The Perception of Presence in Virtual Performance,” he has directed virtual productions of The Bacchae and Prometheus Bound in Second Life (SL). He began teaching with technology in 1993, and since then has been writing and presenting on the topic, including editing the book, Theatre in Cyberspace: Issues of Teaching, Acting and Directing (2000). More recently he has turned his attention to Transhumanism, with a side-detour into Steampunk. Stephen is also interested digital filmmaking; check out his work on his youtube channel.

Book preview

Introduction To The Silent Oracle

I present here an anthology of my poems, housed in a collection that is labeled with another of my contradictory titles. What good is a silent oracle, we may ask. Then again, what good is consulting an oracle whose advice and prophecy one then ignores?

The poems herein are an eclectic mix of pieces based on classical mythology (a recurring theme for me in recent years), some quick dashed-off snapshots of a moment or thought in time, and some more emotionally reflective pieces. Some of the material is quite up to date (texting students) while the smiling blonde librarian in Signs and Omens has hovered in my memory since 1975.

Dark and Twisted Landscape (Bosola’s Dream) was inspired by a production of John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi that I directed in 2009. I was intrigued by the many fascinating turns of phrase in the play, and sought to collect them in a single poem. The quotations used are all lines from the play.

I, Prometheus also suggests a new idea I had about creating poetic monologues from a character’s point of view. Lest my readers become concerned at some of the darker pieces (including Didn’t See It in Your Eyes), note that sometimes I am just following up on a random idea I had that sounded like the basis of a poem, and it became so. I warn my playwrighting students that people will often think they are being autobiographical, even when they are not. That is true frequently here.

As for the rest, they bounce back and forth between humorous and serious, and I hope you will be able to figure out which is which.

While reading through them all as I examined the order of the presentation, I reminded myself again how they are mostly written to be read aloud or performed, not read silently. Again, perhaps the oracle must always