Top 5 Poems and Discussion of the SF Poems from the 2020 Rhysling Award Anthology

[To read the discussion of long poems, click here.]

A good speculative poem is a difficult thing to balance. Writing a good poem is hard. Writing speculative fiction is hard. Trying to do both is like scale Everest while spinning plates.

The term suggests it’s going to be a narrative. Most are, generally—in a basic sense (not in a traditional story sense). It also suggests it’s going to be speculative—that is, suggest a sense of wonder—which most also do, albeit to do something astounding in so short a space is unusual, so the good speculative poem tends to focus on the emotion. I’ve seen a few excel on their technical delivery. Sometimes, instead of speculation, science appears in lieu of speculation, usually the space variety.

The trick is often the poem part. What makes a thing a poem? Emily Dickinson said it takes her head off.* And so it does, usually on a word level, asking you to see a thing anew. Billy Collins does this mainly at the image level, which some criticize him for, but note that ninety to ninety-nine percent of what appears as SF Poetry is exactly that: working at the image level only. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as some spectacularly great works can be written at this level, but it does leave a whole world of poetry to explored: the words, recombinations, juxtapositions, references, line breaks and a grab bag of literary devices to make the reader to rethink, resee what’s out there.

*SF does this, too, except in a different way, usually larger, narrative and philosophic scales although poetry can be philosophical, too.

A good work of art also turns the reader to look back on himself (or whatever the pronoun). Who are we as individuals or as a species, etc. Compare, however, the fourth poem listed here to the first. The fourth occupies its human realm with forays into the speculative. The best one lives in the skin of SF and asks us to see our own world anew. That is what makes it not only the best short SF poem in this anthology, but probably in the field.

Can a poem simply make us laugh or feel (horror, love, anger, stun, awe)? Can it simply capture a moment or a mind? Sure. But ideally it can do more than one thing. These are the major aesthetics that should govern the judging of the arts—not politics or gender or race or religion (or the poem is propagandist whose agenda isn’t the arts but whatever propaganda it’s trying to propagate). And so, with this rubric in mind, I’ll look for the best of those.

The following magazines had short poems of some note nominated here:

Star*Line – 4

Liminality -- 3

Polu Texni – 3

Asimov’s – 2

Fireside Fiction – 2

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction – 2

Rattle – 2

Spectral Lit – 2

Strange Horizons – 2

These aren’t necessarily the best publishers of SF poetry (although they might be), but happen to be the center of a Venn diagram of Rhysling voters, the magazines they read, and my aesthetics.

This year, like last, more women were nominated than men. About three to one. Is this a pattern? Are women more likely to submit and publish poems and represent the legitimate majority? Or is this selection sexist? The same thing has been happening with most awards. Since a male penned the best short poem this year, it will be interesting to watch how the tally goes.

Last year, I lumped the poems into of good candidates--fewer candidates, fewer notes. This year, the best poems out paced the main body of candidates.

The Top Five Countdown:

5.

Tim Jones’s “Encore” [Big Hair Was Everywhere] is remarkable mostly for its mix of emotions—an interesting, darkly humorous voice—but also the close snaps shut with some resonance. The line breaks are unimpressive, laid out for emphasis, and seem not particularly poetic. For example: suddenly cropped lines with only “the dead” or “Fingernails” in them. Still, solid work. Sample:

Four guys, four shots of whisky.

They like their liquor strong,

the dead.

Twin guitars, bass, drums.

Eight rotting hands

poised above the downbeat.

Good tight voice and imagery. I tried quoting just one stanza, but the poem builds and so, without some context, the lines seem not as potent. Do read the full poem.

4.

Mary McMyne captures a poignant human emotion in “The Mother Searches for Her Own Story” [Strange Horizons] although the last line seems to overstate its case. The “staying alive” is merely the psychological sense, not the literal one. The line might have had a dual sense had she made that come into play within the poem, which would have added more power and resonance. Also the speculation isn’t shaped but suggested. Nonetheless, taking her speculation into our world makes it more poignant than most of these.

2 + 3.

I won’t separate these two, but will discuss their relative merits:

“The Night the Unicorn Leapt from the Tapestry” by Kate Pentecost [Liminality] is truly magical and sweet. Nice images. The most memorable line is “velvet ropes unhitched themselves as [the Unicorn] moved among the still lifes.”

To read Lily Zhou’s “From ‘Moon Sonnet’” [Poetry], one may need to be conversant in the Chinese myth of Chang’e. Still we can see a semi-unreliable persona:

“I am terrible

at playing heroine. I’ve done all I can:...

saved the tortoise from its slow drowning.”

The tortoise is presumably not drowning although he may have after a natural death, but it sounds like his death had been hastened. The language here is suggestive and taut, which is the poem’s strength. Contrast that with Pentecost’s which might have worked as well in prose. Pentecost’s, however, has a stronger sense of wonder.

1.

Bruce Boston’s “The Ruined Library” [Asimov’s] is the best poem. Why? First, he sets up an atmosphere of decay. It pays attention to the lines and the big picture. We have a “blast // building and broke” where we get the sound matching image. Plus there are fascinating phrases like “cargo of words.” The killer, though, is the double play of his ending:

Yet the deserted library

still has many patrons.

Creatures small and pale...

tunnel through one

volume after another,

devouring one letter

at a time until they

have the last word.

Damn. That’s good. Tape this sucker on your locker or above your writing desk to inspire.

                                                                                                                            

For comments on other short poems of merit that appeared in this year’s Rhysling Award anthology, click here.