Monday, April 5, 2004 | 8:39 a.m.
Watching Seth "Fingers" Flynn Barkan play the arcade classic "Galaga," it seems obvious where he got his nickname.
Barkan taps the fire button with lightning speed. He zips his fighter ship left, then right, skillfully avoiding enemy missiles and kamikaze attacks -- lightly shaking the arcade machine in the process.
His body is an instrument of destruction to the pixelated alien horde.
After one of his ships is creamed by a gigantic space bug, Barkan is undeniably perturbed.
"I take this very seriously," he says.
So it's only that much stranger to learn that Barkan's nickname did not come from his video-game prowess. He's an accomplished stride (an early form of traditional jazz) piano player who performs at a local beer bar, Freakin Frog, 4700 S. Maryland Parkway, Friday nights beginning at 7.
Barkan laughs at the mistaken origin of his nickname.
"It's happened several times before," he says.
Barkan is hardly surprised. After all, he's the author of "Blue Wizard is About to Die!" ($15.95, Rusty Immelman Press), which he says is the first and only book of poems and prose devoted to video games.
Published in late January, "Blue Wizard is About to Die!" has sold 4,000 of its 5,000 first-run copies. (It can be found on amazon.com and soon in local bookstores.)
The book has been featured in a blurb in Entertainment Weekly, a full-page spread in Stuff magazine, and in articles in the Detroit Free Press and the Los Angeles Times, as well as National Public Radio's "Here and Now" program.
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas student and writer for alternative weekly CityLife was even filmed reading from his book during a recent local poetry reading by the video-game news show, "Pulse," featured on the G4 network (seen locally on Cox digital cable channel 355).
Media publication Adweek reported on the scene as well, and used the poetry reading as a lead-in for a story on the omni- presence of video games.
Barkan will also be reading from his book in a poetry reading, "Under the Influence," featuring several UNLV professors, at 7 p.m. April 15 at Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road. Admission is free.
While the uniqueness of the book might seem like a gimmick to get published, Barkan does have a track record. He was first published in 2001 with "A Cacophony of Near-Fatal Mistakes" ($24, Jazzclaw UK), a collection of poems about booze, jazz and his "propensity towards disastrous relationships."
It's just that Barkan loves video games and poetry, and this is his way of paying homage.
The author drops names of obscure video-game programmers into conversation with the same ease as he mentions underground poets -- often in the same breath.
And Barkan knows his video games.
Although Barkan said he wrote "Blue Wizard is About to Die!" in loving tribute to 23 years of his life -- and death -- in video games, he also acknowledges another motive.
"I want to save poetry with this book, as naive as it sounds," he says.
By combining the pop-culture clout of video games with the underground appeal of poetry, Barkan says he hopes that non-poetry readers will be turned on to the writing style.
"I wanted to show that poetry is not this effete, snobby, elitist thing," he says.
And while some poetry lovers have praised Barkan's work -- just weeks ago he received an e-mail from a student at Cambridge University who gets together with other students for midnight readings of the book -- others have been more critical of his effort.
"It's difficult ... the concept is so weird, people just object to it outright," he says. "But they're in the overwhelming minority."
Barkan wrote the majority of the book in one afternoon, while contemplating the failure of his other book to sell.
"I watched it die," Barkan says of his first effort.
While sitting at his classic Royal Quiet Deluxe manual typewriter, Barkan wrote much of the book that afternoon. He spent the next five months writing the other prose, poems and "emoto-versatronic expressionist pieces about video games," as his book describes the works.
"Unfortunately, I should have picked a better title," he laments. "Less people get it than I had hoped."
"Blue Wizard is About to Die!" is a reference to a computer voice warning in the classic-'80s arcade game "Gauntlet."
The title is indicative of the sly humor found in the book, which, Barkan contends, is imperative to understand -- gamer and non-gamer alike -- to truly appreciate the material.
In "Mario in Exile," for example, the famous plumber, long since retired from his video-game days, is now a villainous dictator gone insane. A few excerpts:
"I AM PLANNING GREAT THINGS!
the drunken Italian dictator shouts,
legs extended, like Stalin
in repose before the fireplace,
lost in books and leather and the madness
of dreams gone wrong
'Where is the music?' he mumbles, humming
the theme from his first great campaign ... trails off, then silence
he stares at the Persian rug, lost inside himself
and begins tweaking his mustache,
the one thing that remains vibrant
on his craggy face;
well-waxed and black as sin,
the life-energy of the land absorbed
in those hairs;
he does not call for the princess
for she is dead, turtle shell in the head;
self-inflicted, found clutching a note with one question:
'where has my plumber gone?' "
And from the poem "Pac Man," which details the fears of the bright-yellow title character who is forever being chased by a gang of deadly ghosts:
"They are coming for me:
THEY ARE COMING FOR ME!
and I am
powerless
to stop them."
There are nearly 50 such poems in the book. Some deal with specific games, others deal with memories of gaming conquests or the people and events at the time.
"Mario Vs. the Punk Rock Hero" details Barkan's first encounter with an '80s punk while playing the video game "Super Mario Brothers." And "Smash TV" recounts he and a friend's nightlong gaming frenzy of "Smash TV" while consuming a bottle of Southern Comfort.
In both stories the games are merely backdrops to the moment, but nonetheless important to the book's overall theme of the purveyance of video-game culture.
"Video games provided us with an experience, even if wasn't directly from the game," Barkan says. "There are things going on around us ... and our friends. These things had an effect on millions and millions of people.
"I tried to bring that out in my book."
But make no mistake, the book is also very much about the author.
"It's my autobiography," he says. "It's one way of looking at my life."
With his book selling well to gamers and non-gamers alike, Barkan says he's considering another book of video-game poetry, perhaps which he'll make available online: "Ninja Golf," the title of which is based on a rare Atari game from the early '80s.
For now, though, he says he's happy with the success of "Blue Wizard is About to Die" -- however fleeting.
"I don't yet hate this book, but it's going to happen," he says. "Just because you outgrow everything you write."
But not everything you play.
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