The Art of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings--the proem

Is it fair to examine poetry intended as a mythic part of as a larger prose work as poetry? Probably not, but such effects should exist to one extent or another. 

The first line has lovely assonance and consonance--the n's and s's and long e's. The second does the work of bringing together the first two lines by not only continuing the above, but also by adding the "or" sound. Moreover, we are given a repetitive grammatical structure of a "[number] for"--a pattern echoed through two more lines.[And to contrast with the \lines that begin with "One."]

Aside from rhyme and iambic rhythm (a rhythm that it didn't start with, anyway), one has to question strange arrangements like "in their halls of stone." Why move "stone" from the more natural "stone halls" to "halls of stone"? It's actually a brilliant move, highlighting the stone--the hardness and coldness, not just of the halls, but of the dwarves, of the rings and the ring bearers--all bound to the one.

"Under the sky" may not add much to eleven-kings unless there are others who don't live under the sky.

The fifth line breaks the pattern with a line that creates foreboding "In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."

Before the fifth line is repeated in the eighth, we have anaphora of "One Ring to"--including an interior anaphora, which does exactly what the words claim: "bind them." There is rhyme, too, although I'm not sure this is an actual form--A B A B, A C C A

While the final line reintroduces us to the darkness, it's not clear that the repetition adds anything new--certainly nothing more than it's first appearance. Perhaps, then, it is best to consider it as a bit of folklore unearthed in the the mythos of this realm--one designed to set mood and demonstrate the power of the ring.

~Top 10% of the Dwarf Stars anthology

Scifaikuest and Star*Line had the most nominees and best work (three each). Although the nominees favor women once again, my choices for the first time leaned toward men. I may not have selected these poets as having written the best poems in the previous years.

My top five poems out of fifty-odd were (in order of appearance, not rank)

• "[lonely robot]" • Noel Sloboda • Scifaikuest print, February  -- (not available online) -- moving 
• "Phoenix" Colleen Anderson • Yellow Arrow Publishing V:3 Re(Formation) -- (not available online) -- self destruction and renewal
• [shapeshifter] • Ngo Binh Anh Khoa • Scifaikuest print, November -- (not available online) -- how the shapeshifter feels
• "[springtime on Pluto]" • David C. Kopaska-Merkel • Scifaikuest online, May -- well captured SF moment
• "[t)here]" • LeRoy Gorman • Star*Line, 43.2 -- good ee cummings play

Also check out these poems:

• "[every lover]" • Christina Sng • Scifaikuest print, February -- (not available online) -- moving, albeit a bit odd in what it asks the reader to sympathize with 
• "Surreal Agenda" • Bruce Boston • Star*Line 43.1

Long Poems of Merit from the 2020 Rhysling Award Anthology

Note: The poets appear here, alphabetically as they do in the anthology. A summation follows. To read last year’s commentary, go here. To read this year's short poemdiscussion, click here.

Alexandria Baisden’s “The Scarecrow’s Lover” [Abyss & Apex] is a moving love-story/tragedy between a scarecrow and some strange plant that crawls up its pole. It is composed of sunflowers, strawberries, ivy, etc. If the poem could have explained or kept it to one, and if it had shortened itself, this would have ranked higher, possibly my favorite. Also, I’m not sure the special typographical displays added substantially, but it’s worth checking out. (See the Inverarity poem below for the same problem, which could have made it a contender as well.)

F. J. Bergmann is represented by three dark, brooding poems—all unusually described, the best being “Maculation” [Spectral Realms]—a kind of Lovecraftian starship horror with the gradual decay of the senses toward a greater horror. It opens:

What I missed most were splotches

of color and shade: irregular clouds

above and around me

Frank Coffman missed his calling in “The Scroll of Thoth” [The Coven’s Hornbook and Other

Poems]. The set up surrounding the poem is nothing short of a Borgesian wonder. The poem itself ponders and pales in comparison. Frank, if you’re out there, please (re)read Jorge Luis Borges and see if he inspires.

While the speculation didn’t sell me on Deborah L. Davitt’s “Children of the Trees” [Polu Texni: A Magazine of Many Arts] the structure and close suggest she is getting close, and may be a poet to keep an eye out for.

Emma J. Gibbon renders “Consumption” [Eye to the Telescope] quite viscerally and sadly. Is this verse the best form for her words? I’m less sure. Still, it’s got quite a bite.

“The Woman Who Talks to Her Dog at the Beach” by Geoff Inverarity [Geist] has some wonderful shifts in surprise. It begins with a woman who asks the dog typical questions an owner might ask, without expecting an answer. However, we are given answers, and the dog seems astute, contemplative to the point of brooding about their greater implications, which is lovely. However, there are problems. Who is relating the story? Definitely not the owner [labeled as “The Woman”] and not the dog as it starts outside the dog and goes inside the dog’s thoughts (how? god-like omniscience? the poet?) and back outside the dog (commenting on “the simple love of dogs,” which no longer seems so simple). Who is our narrator and how is he privileged to get his information? How does the dog go from simple [typical happy-go-lucky dog actions, no brooding] to deep [inside his head] to simple again [by some unnamed speaker]? This might have been a wonderful poem had the poet considered these questions and perhaps become a greater poem at having arrived at an unusual conclusion. (See the Baisden poem above for the same problem, which could have made it a contender as well.)

The best image lines from Herb Kauderer’s “Green Sky” [Influence of the Moon]:

human shellfish

invaded the moon,

skittering around

in personal metal houses

like vacuum trilobites

It treads some profound ground but would likely have been more successful at a much shorter length.

Marsheila Rockwell,’s “Stormbound” [Polu Texni: A Magazine of Many Arts] might have converted me to its revelations if it hadn’t felt familiar.

Cynthia So’s “If Love is Real, So Are Fairies” [Uncanny] tantalizes with a couple of nice images well phrased:

working her powdery

magic ....

a shiver

elicited by her microscopic fingers

whispering across the back of my neck.

D. A. Xiaolin Spires penned my favorite ten line last year. This year’s Rhylsing nominee, “tetrahedral edifices of a sticky rice realm” [Mithila Review]—as the title suggests—is an imaginative and evocative work, but a bit too on the nose and, paradoxically, too dream logicked:

light

shocks jangling my jade bangles

i smell the pungent odor of

temple incense and feel

a thousand eyes pressing against

my forehead...

i blink away the doubt, swallow my reservations and

proceed forth

T. D. Walker has two poems—“Eight Simulations for the Missing” and “For My Daughter, Who Will Ask for a Seismograph Implant on Her Sixteenth Birthday” [Small Waiting Objects]—and

Holly Lyn Walrath has one—“The Mining Town” [2019 SFPA Poetry Contest]—that were I an editor, I’d sit on to mull over. They are more ambitious than most, but am I or am I not sold on these? They are all told in piecemeal with strange and lovely structures. However, are any greater than the sum of their parts?

The first, “Eight Simulations for the Missing”, describes “sightings” (real or imagined—simulated or desired) of a loved one. The second is a mother addressing her daughter via earthquakes sensed on a seismograph.  “The Mining Town” seems to be an old West mining  ghost town, leading us eventually to the devil. In each narrative bit, the sections end with a question, not unlike the quiz at the end of reading to check if you were paying attention although the answers aren’t necessarily found within the texts.

Summation:

From these poems selected, there is no clear winner that stands above the rest. A number of these would have been more successful at shorter lengths. I commented on about two out of every five of the shorter poems, and one out of four of the longer. Note that I read for aesthetics first and then become curious about ratios and statistics, afterwards. Trying to put politics above art strangles both. A few poems were well written, but their speculation didn’t strike me, so I didn’t comment.

At a later date, I’ll need to reread the aforementioned three poems to determine how I felt about them. My gut instinct is to cast my primary vote for F. J. Bergmann’s “Maculation” with T. D. Walker’s “For My Daughter, Who Will Ask for a Seismograph Implant on Her Sixteenth Birthday” as runner-up, but maybe I’d reverse that later, or some other combination.

Of these long poems, my aesthetics didn’t happen to select poems from more than one magazine (two from what I suspect is T.D. Walker’s collection, which I’d be interested in reading) except Polu Texni, which I selected three of their poems before, making them seem to have been a magazine to read and appear in for speculative poetry—at least for getting noticed in the Rhysling awards.

Asimov’s, Dreams & Nightmares, F&SF, Star*Line, Strange Horizons are the usual hot beds for SF poetry, but Apparition Lit, Liminality, Polu Texni,  have all caught my eye of late in addition to a few others I will have to check out. I regularly read Rattle and Poetry, but an SF poem is a rarity. I suspect the genre’s an acquired taste, especially given the special challenges of trying to fulfill two genres at once.

The ratio of female to male in long poems is about 2:1, which is close to my selection of poems to comment on although it appears only females will get my votes for long poems this year. Before I vote though, I will reread the four poems by women (please forgive me if I messed up someone’s gender) and maybe a few other poets who are usually strong, in case I read them too quickly.

Good luck to all the poets nominated.

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.

Short Poems of Merit from the 2020 Rhysling Award anthology

Note: I will discuss my top five here, and semi-loose selectioncriteria, including an overview.

Mike Allen conjures some dark, wild imagery in “The Sacrifices” [Sycorax Journal].

Two light verses that work as speculative humor are David Clink’s “Steampunk Christmas” [Star*Line] and P S Cottier’s “[Aliens declutter]” [Scifaikuest]

Good lines from Deborah L. Davitt’s “The Journey” [Polu Texni: A Magazine of Many Arts] (reminiscent of C. L. Moore’s famous tale, “Shambleau”):

She found him on the shore, ship-wrecked, sea-wracked—

his eyes had lost their light...

her serpentine locks twined

around him, supple, sleek, and scaled.

Lamentable repetition: “Every love’s a journey into darkness”

Good lines from Robin Wyatt Dunn’s “Disassembly at auction” [Mobius: The Journal of

Social Change]

And a hallucinatory blue smear over the left retina

Chassis intact, with some bruising of the metal...

Gonads still functional

Brain missing.

Left leg is a total loss

Right, still has...

Good finale from Amelia Gorman’s “Alternate Galatea” [Liminality]:

 the base is strong and the paper

whispers and rustles in the wind

Vince Gotera’s “All-Father” [Dreams and Nightmares] is a nice tribute, clever with a morsel of wonder.

Good lines from Jessica J. Horowitz’s “Taking, Keeping” [Spectral Lit]:

When at last they took her tongue, she etched each letter

into the tips of her fingers, across her ribs,

in the hollow places behind her eyes.

She carved epics between the layers of her skin,

stitched verses into each sinew.

Juleigh Howard-Hobson’s “Area 51 Custodian Gets Coffee” [Star*Line] is the kind of poem you’d think would find its way into this type of anthology. Nice narrative fragment, nice little visceral shock at the end.

In “Goddamn These Minotaurs” Persephone Erin Hudson [paintbucket] displays voice and energy, but nothing yet to quote. Not quite there.

John Philip Johnson plays with bitter-sweet irony in “Mothsong” [Liquid Imagination] although no particularly striking lines. His “Fly” [Rattle] poem closed nicely.

Catherine Kyle’s “Seven Reasons to Have Hope for a Better Future. Number Five Will Really Get You!” [Quail Bell] has an ironic tone that works for it although the best thing is its fantastic title. It mixes Biblical apocalypse with common jokes about the latest generation’s penchants.

Kathleen A. Lawrence retells “Hansel and Gretel” [Star*Line] from the witch’s perspective in “The Nonpareils: As Told by the Woman in the Gingerbread House” to some advantage.

Mary Soon Lee tells some entertaining verse: “To Skeptics” [The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction] being the most effective.

Francine P. Lewis ["drag strip drag" in Eye to the Telescope] and Jeff Crandall [“Halsted IV” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction] had some impressively structured poems. Crandall’s being the more emotive due to the nature of Lewis’s tight structure, where the poem is reverses itself in two directions. Crandall is more loose with his redeploying “The House that Jack Built”—not forcing himself to repeat events each time, but uses that to create a sense of an inevitable outcome.

Sandra J. Lindow’s “Creation: Dark Matter Dating App” [Asimov’s] is a charming misinterpretation of a scientific sentence.

Nisa Malli’s “Abeona, Goddess of Outward Journeys, Pilots the Interstellar Ark” [Spectral Lit] has what could become a fascinating speculative examination, but it doesn’t feel quite there yet. I gather it’s a problematic A.I., but we need sharper details (same number of words, just sharper—not so much sharper images but the effect she wants).

Caroline Mao‘s “when my father reprograms my mother {” [Strange Horizons] is effective, even moving, but it never quite arrives.

“The Certainty of Seeing” by Michelle Muenzler [Polu Texni: A Magazine of Many Arts] captures a moment of revisiting an ailing patient (through a psychological time travel) although we aren’t given much context.

Jason O’Toole’s “Samsara” [The Scrib Arts Journal] suggests that reincarnation means you should give your kids cupcakes, which will benefit you somehow. I wanted this to work, but we need more dots to connect.

Uche Ogbuji’s “Kolanut or kola tree  Íjè [Kola Journey]” [FIYAH Literary Magazine] has interesting translations and cultural aspects. As a poem, it is at its strongest when it comes up with lovely strange descriptions; “no sick greengray” “a shovel breath” “toes spadeing the soil.” Some are simply strange ones: dialogue croaked and “She grimaces while replying:” The kolanut is kind of a totem that carries freight although it doesn’t quite get to that and could probably use more development. There’s a lot of bandying back and forth since a third (?) of the poem is in a different language. I decided to search and replace to see if that helped and notice that could have conveyed a different culture just by substituting “Until the dawn!” for goodnight. That way we’re not floundering for the primary sense of what’s happening (unless confusion is called for), but we are within this culture and should hear the phrases as the other native characters hear it. I know there are other hypotheses, but poetry has barriers enough. Let people enter the poem smoothly. Use cognates if you have them unless you mean to exclude (but then why a poem?) and I don’t think Uche Ogbuji means to do that, especially given the translations provided.

Christina Olson [from her prize-winning Rattle chapbook, The Last Mastadon] has some science poems that offer bright, little moments and occasionally nice structure, but the whole doesn’t quite click for me.

Terrie Leigh Relf hints in “Revisiting the origins of language” [Space & Time Magazine] (if one compares the title to the ending) that language was created as a poem to lost love, which is sweet.

“The Ghosts of Those” by Ron Riekki [Star*Line] is a non-speculative poem about PTSD in the aging with some word- rhythm (“emptied, struggling for words, for worlds, / for wars other than the faded wars, the fading wars,”) and fun word pairings (“in my farmhouse mind, strange-keeled, fog-queened,”), but again it’s not speculative.

WC Roberts captures an intriguing scenario and atmosphere in “Phobos and Deimos” [Chrome Bairn] but it needs more time percolating.

Marge Simon’s “The Snow Globe” [Polu Texni: A Magazine of Many Arts] captures a tender moment between lovers who only come alive when it's shaken. Through a confusion of pronouns, it sets up the boy to be the man inside—neat trick.

Christina Sng in “Styx” [Spectral Realms] admirably takes something should stir horror and turns it into something tender. Quite a feat.

“Three of Swords, King of Cups” by Ali Trotta [Fireside Fiction] presents an extended metaphor that mostly works although it might have be shortened to greater effect.

Jacqueline West discusses “Lady Macbeth’s Green Gown” [Liminality] in the 1888 play which “was sewn / all over with real green beetle wings.” What a beautiful found image.

Fran Wilde’s “The Unseen” [Fireside Fiction] talks about fog in a pleasant manner—better fare than most novelists. The best lines: “it takes the distance first, / that mountain we always said we’d climb” although it isn’t really speculative. Scientific? Maybe?

How to Fracture a Fairy Tale 

Jane Yolen 

Tachyon Publications 

SF & Fantasy, Teens & YA

How I feel about Jane Yolen’s How to Fracture a Fairy Tale has a lot to do with the book’s title. It is what drew me to the book, as a reader and as a writer. I started at the beginning and was reading through. The first couple of essays and stories caught my attention, but my interest started to flag. Maybe because I’ve read so many fairy tales and rewritten fairy tales, they lose their shininess after a few. A writer really has to alter the fairy tale significantly or remove the traces of the fairy tale in an updated telling. It isn’t enough to wave politics to reflect today’s mores (unless this is your first book of revised fairy tales).

I skipped to the poetry to see how those fared and found what I was looking for in the title. The commentary and poems show the writer’s mind at work. The writer herself said the poems were written to go with the stories, so I wondered why they were so separated from their story pairings. Maybe some people don’t like commentary. Maybe some don’t like poems, but the design should at least stand the poems beside the stories if not the commentary as well. Let those who only like stories turn one page instead of making everyone else—who is intrigued by the interplay between works, the way a fairy tale can be reconstructed in different ways—flip to the end of the book to read together what was intended to go together.

To me, the ordering affects how I’d rate the book. As it stands, it’s fine with some interesting retellings. If it were ordered as it seemed intended from the title and from the commentary, I’d recommend readers mob the book. At least, my mind became more engaged when I reordered.

The highlights of the collection include “Snow in Summer” (a Snow White retelling with a down-home voice) and “The Bridge's Complaint” (a bridge tells his version of the troll and the billy goats, mostly for the surprising perspective), “Great-Grandfather Dragon's Tale” (this describes an unusual “man raised by wild animals” tale—dragons, no less—interesting for its frame structure and the emotion evoked by a simple symbol). In “Cinder Elephant” Cinderella is overweight and can speak in the language of birds.

Even if the stories aren’t stunning, they contain intriguing aspects such as “Happy Dens; or, A Day in the Old Wolves' Home” where wolves in a nursing home get to tell their side of the story (a curious and ambiguous ending). There’s a nice wish-fulfilment one where the prophet, Elijah, saves Jews from concentration camps while another tells of a mother who’s died to return as a vampire.

A few, like the thrilling novelette “One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox, and the Dragon King,” could have been improved by updating the fairy-tale-ness a little further, perhaps modernizing the language a little more or erasing more of the fairy-tale tracks.

The collection is definitely worth investigating. Maybe you agree with the present ordering, or maybe you can try it as the book seems to suggest it wants to be. Either way, turning the page isn’t too hard a chore to get the book that you want. I, for one, want How to Fracture a Fairy Tale.

Top 20 Dwarf Star Poems

Disclosure: I have a poem in here and am pleased to be included. I won’t suggest where or if it belongs on any of these levels. Readers can judge for themselves. I link to it at the bottom. It’s part of a whole suite of moon poems that accrue meaning. For interested parties, I’ll include other poems of that series that I can find online, so they can get a feel for how they fit together.

Observations on the top 20:

I organized the poems into groups although I could see them sliding up or down according to one’s taste. I was definitely surprised to find three of my top four to be haiku. I love haiku, but they’re rarely done well. These are not only emotionally potent but carry double duty.

Forms that slip from prose poem to haiku, so far, seem better without the haiku.

The list in the admirable middle group could be argued to be higher. They generally capture something of a feeling or thought that resonated with me. John C. Mannone’s is clever, but I feel it operates at a higher level, especially as it takes one voice and transforms it into another.

Once again Star*Line has the most representatives here with five (a quarter of the representatives!). Scifaikuest has three, and Troutswirl has two, both in the top group. Again, I don’t try to balance gender, but it is awfully close. Bruce Boston and F. J. Bergmann are the only poets to appear in the top Rhysling and Dwarf Stars while Christina Sng is the only poet to have two good ones in one.

It will be interesting to see how others vote on these poems.

Note 1: Within each group, poems are organized alphabetically by title.

Note 2: If I can find the poem online, a link will be provided. I had a hard time locating most.

The Mid 8

• “all my nightmares,” Christina Sng, Scifaikuest (online), November 2018.
• “emerging,” Christina Sng, Colorado Boulevard, August 2018.
• “empty house,” Maryalicia Post, Ribbons 14:3.
• Failing Masterpiece, Bruce Boston, Star*Line 41.1.
• “the little girl stopped,” Jennifer Hambrick, Atlas Poetica: 25 Science Fiction Tanka and Kyoka, eds. Julie Bloss Kelsey & Susan Burch.
• Men on Mars and Witches from Venus, John C. Mannone, Tales from the Moonlit Path, November 2018.
• News Update, Herb Kauderer, Star*Line 41.3.
• Rapunzel, F. J. Bergmann, Abyss & Apex, January 1, 2018.

The Top 4:

• “crash of waves,” Paul Geiger, Troutswirl, July 18, 2018.
• The Everlasting Self, Tracy K. Smith, Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018).
• “ocean swim,” Peter Jastermsky, Troutswirl, August 1, 2018
• “return trip,” Julie Bloss Kelsey, Scifaikuest (print), May 2018.

The Clever 8:

• cannibalizing parts, Lauren McBride, Scifaikuest (print), November 2018.
• Ghazal, Joshua Gage, Star*Line 41.2.
• Everything started with the Big Bang, they say, Juanjo Bazán, Star*Line 41.2.
• The Evolutionary Race, Peter Payack, Asimov’s SF, March/April 2018.
• “moebius strip,” Lucy Whitehead, Otata 33.
• The Pillars of Creation, Jason Gray, Literary Matters 11.1.
• “There was an A.I.…,” Robert Dawson, Star*Line 41.4.
• where to hide an alien in plain sight, LeRoy Gorman, Scryptic 2:4.

#

Trent Walters, Man on the Moon poems online, the first is the nominee. The others are part of the poetic suite.

Life on the Moon v1.0, Trent Walters, Red FlagPoetry,  

Life on the Moon v.2.0 Right Hand Pointing (about half way down, formatting off--for formatting, see first poem)

O Moon (Self/Coda) Menacing Hedge

O Moon (Jehovah)  Lune

O Moon (Shakespeare) Lune

Review: Sacrificial Nights by Bruce Boston and Alessandro Manzetti

Every review is a tightrope walk. You navigate between being fair to the author and fair to the reader. The review's job is to point readers to books they might love, and steer away those who would not. It is to their mutual advantage as both might forge future relations.

This one is especially tricky due to all of the genres involved: poetry, fiction, experimental, supernatural, natural, mystery, horror.

For instance, a blurb claimed this novella/collection was noir, so I kept searching for noir and being disappointed that is wasn't there--as might other readers. Not only are proper labels useful but they are also critical to avoid aggravating readers that they damn works through no fault of the author.

Who will be interested?

As far as poetry, those who read primarily for mood or tone will be delighted. As for fiction, we have multiple story threads with dark bodings bordering the land that lies between horror and mystery--although the supernatural bent is more hinted at. The threads are too tenuous to build characters, but they do intrigue in how they weave together, so those who love strangely assembled narratives--think along the lines of Theodore Sturgeon's Some of Your Blood--may also fall for this one.

The book is lavishly illustrated (by Ben Baldwin) and is its own wonder. If you admire the combination of art and moody words, look no further.

If you are seeking Bruce Boston's more thoughtful verse, this probably is not the droid you're looking for. This is my first book for Manzetti, so I have nothing to compare.

But it does have art. Two ubiquitous motifs are rain and fire. They are tiresome until you realize they have been cultivated for the opposite reason they are normally employed:

"Watching the pendulum of the wipers on the rain-spotted glass, she prays silently for rain and more rain, a rain to end all rains, one that could wash her mind clean of the cold white darkness that infests it like disease." --from "Rose and the White Stalker"

It takes a few readings to glom on to this reversal. It is the rain--or at least the waters it leaves behind--that allows disease to fester. It is not until the extended conflagration scenes that baptism by fire occurs.

"Rose and the White Stalker" is probably where my interest was first piqued by the individual poems. A woman, Rose, kidnapped--but nothing happens to her, which is both a momentary relief and curious. All's well that ends well, right? Her story doesn't end here.

More fascinating is Eva in "Cannibal at Large" who follows Harry, despite knowing he has consumed her father and mother. The narrative returns to her and Harry at the end, with a surprising twist. These may be my favorite characters of this circuitous narrative.

Of interest, as well, is "The Xacto Killer: Interior Monologue," which details how a serial killer might decide to up his game.

Other characters include Jean-Paul, a painter; Sandoval, a detective on the trail of the Xacto Killer; and Eugene who begins the fire at the whore house. The narrative picks up again with Eugene final act--an act which ties up (mostly) the dangling loose ends.

This collection/novella isn't for everyone, but for some, they will hug this testosterone-boosted adventure into cross-genres fiercely.

Time Travel: Theory and Practice by Katie Berger -- a review

I recently devoured and re-devoured Katie Berger's Time Travel: Theory and Practice.  Berger is a Nebraska native who just finished her poetry MFA at Alabama.  The dry, academic title is accompanied by graphs and figures (see image to the right).

But the poetry itself is anything but dry. The poems read as if Kelly Link had written a book of slipstream poetry regarding time travel. Link, though, tends to treat life in service of the tropes whereas Berger does the tropes in service of life. It is a somewhat intimate look at the poet persona as a young woman looking back at her roots. How does one look at or accept memory (i.e. time travel) of one's past?

The dramatis personæ: Berger writes of her poet persona, "I possess a distinct memory of flying." Paul, her time-traveling conscience (and friend), corrects her, "You try to remember." And the grandfather, who seems a muse, a being who has traveled through much time (an almost mystical being whose car can be seen four miles away), and perhaps a system (or the old system) of orderliness in the chaos of the everyday.

Berger's persona attempts to construct a time machine out of such everyday items. These lists of items represent an ordering of life, an randomness to forge a way to penetrate the past. Even the geography shapes the persona from...

"the Great Plains

"Plain, yes.

"Great, no, never!" 

"Open landscape lead to... an acceptance that no geography can conceal anything."

The humor is subdued, which in part reminded of Link:

You had to memorize the law of gravity for it to have any effect whatsoever.... 

I once memorized the blueprint for a time machine.... 

I found the blueprint to the time machine when my mind was filled with
Siberian tigers
ptarmigans
Indian elephants.... 

It was an air purifier, ok?... 

I have either memorized the blueprint for a time machine or an air purifier.

Below is a sample from the collection although it is actually the fifth part, not the first:

Some perceived flaws may be that certain sections could be omitted. Also, there is no travel to the future. On the one hand, this could not treat memory; on the other, it would encompass the idea of time travel and life itself (we are forward-looking people). This might have given a less linear feel as well.














Nonetheless, it's collection well worth getting your hands on, for those who like Kelly Link, poetry, interstitial speculation, mixed with the everyday.

Poetry links

Poetry Isn't as Useless as a Lot of Poets Say It Is 

A recent speech at Yale inadvertently sums up what's wrong with the art form these days: Its gatekeepers believe poetry matters because it's poetry, not because of what it says by NOAH BERLATSKY

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Poetic Techniques: OULIPO

• Poets.org
• Poetry Foundation 

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SF Site review of 

Sweet Poison 

by Marge Simon and Mary A. Turzillo

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Songs of Eretz has a special issue on Marge Simon's work.

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Tiferet Talk Interviews with dozens of contemporary poets

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Poetry Rules: Campbell McGrath

Call for Submissions: Dreams & Nightmares for special issue 100.

David C. Kopaska-Merkel, editor of Dreams & Nightmares, put out a special call for his issue #100 theme on time:

 "Time" isn't really a theme, per se. But I want poems having to do with time. Not just time travel, but poems in which the passage of time, or other aspects of time, play a role. You can start submitting now; just earmark submissions for #100.

Review: Dark Roads by Bruce Boston (Final Part: 6: Circling Back)

• Overview of Bruce Boston's collection
• Part 2: Opening Poems
• Part 3: Boston Hones the Bostonian Style
• Part 4: The U-Turn
• Part 5: The Harvest

Eventually, Boston circles back to home, back to surrealistic mode but changed, darker, carrying his new voice, his new insights on the field after a lifetime of trucking down these darker roads....

"Fire Is the Devil's Only Friend"  

The devil loves destruction (and those of his ilk), but it isn't especially bright or pleasant companion.

"The Changing of the Flesh"  

A tale of overcoming, notable for its dual voices.

"The House Broods over Us"  

Lovely prose poem about house/family relationship that is as intricate and mysterious as myth.

"The Crow Is Dismantled in Flight"  

Another strong poem--well paired to contrast with the above--about a woman-crow and a man who "eats crow."

"The Restaurant That Is No Longer There"  

Memory plays tricks, invents itself where it had never been:

Just like its patrons,
creatures of blatant needs
and transient significance,
who have also succumbed
to time and been changed
by the years passing by. 

Tonight I invite you
to dine at the restaurant
that is no longer there.

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Vulture"  

A nod to Wallace Stevens concerning long-hated carrion eaters who often bode an  end approaching.

"Dark Rains Here and There"  

Fascinating poem about the muse and symbolic expectations. Dark literature may reap positive effects:

When the dark rains fell
on many different worlds,
here and there,
she learned to live with love 

and

when life seemed dry and spare
as the [cloudless... high desert] around her,
she found herself watching
for one more dark rain
she could walk in.

"Surreal Fortune"  and "The River Magnus Winds through the Shadow City" and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at and through Hashish"

These last three play out the promise of "Dark Rains Here and There". We return to Boston's surreal origins, but darker (I take the drugs as a metaphor of genre-like dreams, but you can take it at face value). It ends:

Tendrils of illumination
Cling to my thoughts,
Trailing in my wake,
Puzzling to those
Whose paths I cross,
Those ever immersed
In the dull endurance
Of their daily tasks,
Without illusions,
Without perception
Of what lies beyond
The stolid borders
Of the everyday,
Insensate and
Unable to travel
In the domains
Of space and time
And consciousness.

Review: Dark Roads by Bruce Boston (pt 5: The Harvest)

• The overview of Bruce Boston's collection is here.
• Part 2: Opening Poems
• Part 3: Boston Hones the Bostonian Style
• Part 4: The U-Turn
• Final Part: 6: Circling Back

These, for my money, are some of his best poems.  They present interesting reflections on the field and his own work.

"The Blue Pomegranate"  

"The Blue Pomegranate" falls into the same period of the height of jazz improv: "Lesions of Genetic Sin", "Pavane for a Cyber-Princess" and "In Far Pale Clarity".  In some sense, it belongs with those poems as it comments on that poetic flavor (although a claim could be made for any speculative poem, but its indefinite-ness argues against that reading):

you can only reach [the blue pomegranate] by riding
a tired horse for three days
and nights through the rain.

Often when we are tired, our minds can be paradoxically most receptive to art.

Do not eat the blue pomegranate.
If you must ingest this fruit,
cut it cleanly from the tree
with a single stroke of your blade,
trap its roll upon the ground,
sever its leathery hide and consume
its sticky seeds in a single sitting....

The warning that is not meant to warn but intrigue. It ends with a Poe-like declaration of what a story is.

Those who worship the blue fruit,
inveterate pomegranate-eaters,
gourmet cultists of the bizarre,
credit it with the most heavenly
of all flavors known to Earth.
In truth it has little flavor at all
except for a slight aftertaste of lime. 

It is, of course, highly hallucinogenic.

A number of contradictions: the knowledgeable claim flavor. Our persona in an authoritative voice claims otherwise. He, too, is full of contradictions. See below.

The results vary dramatically
according to the individual fruit
and the individual consuming it....
Generally the more rigidly defined
the personality of the individual,
the more devastating the experience....

Your reading experience may vary.

So stay away from that horse.
Do not go searching for that tree.
Come and sit here by the hearth
while the burning logs crackle.... 

Forget the blue pomegranate.
Remember the blue pomegranate. 

Never forget what I have told you.

Contradict your contradictions to leave the rigidly defined thoroughly confused.

"Film Artifact: A Review" 

This reminded me of Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions. This would have been published around the same time. A fascinatingly bizarre book. David Zimmer researches director Hector Mann's films for a book. It's an intense story within a story, told with a distancing effect. I read it awhile ago, so clearly it had an impact.

This poem acquires a similar voice to Auster's yet applied like "The Blue Pomegranate":

meaning real or symbolic
from its reeling progression,
the events portrayed seem
to shift ever so slightly.
(Further evidence of tampering
by time travelers or merely
the flaws of imperfect memory?)....

There is no dramatic structure
nor any clear effort to convey
a theme or sense of the whole.

You aren't necessarily meant to understand.

what frightens you most,
more than its incomprehensibility,
more than its tedious repetition
or the way it jump cuts inexplicably
from one Grand Guignol to the next,
is the undeniable realization that
you have seen your own likeness,
your absolute image as a celluloid clone,
looming larger than life on the screen.

Yet the seeming chaos/tedium/madness reflects our lives.

"She Was There for Him the Last Time"

I've commented in some detail here.  I wish now I'd actually written out all of my original thoughts. I'll add more later if I think of any, but my original assessment seems rather complete.

Review: Dark Roads by Bruce Boston (pt 4: The U-Turn)

• The overview of Bruce Boston's collection is here.
• Part 2: Opening Poems
• Part 3: Boston Hones the Bostonian Style
• Part 5: The Harvest
• Final Part: 6: Circling Back

Notes on individual poems:

"Confessions of a Body Thief"

Within this new context, I read this poem as a far more powerful statement than I initially read it. Writers and poets are body thieves. The lone wanderer is a more dynamic figure than in previous incarnations: This presents his coming of age, the coming into the man of his own:

Flush with youthful vigor,
a burgeoning libido,
and a head full of ideals,
I promptly chose the latter
without a shade of doubt. 

Wielding my axe like a pen,
and often like a sword,
I defined a shaggy credo,
my generation’s song.
With the lyrics of another...

He lives as a rock star, Wall-Street accountant, woman, other races, but realizes

I am not the one to judge.
I have stolen other lives.
I’ve ravaged mind and limb.
I have left my spirit far behind
and forsaken my own name.

This has a nice resonance and contrast with the opening poem. But it also reads as a credo, a stance to demand to do his own thing. Which stands to reason:  How often have we thought we were doing or own thing only to discover that, no, this was someone else's thing foisted upon us?

For me, this is the collection's pivotal poem--not because it won a Rhysling award, but because it announced the poet's intentions (visible in earlier poems actually) of making a sea-change. That's probably the way of things as well:  We announce our changes in the middle of doing so.

In case you weren't sure, check out the next poem title:

"Scenario for a Muse Cycle So Far Off Broadway There Are Tide Pools in the Wings"

This poem backs up earlier thought with its conclusion (he=poet persona, she=muse):

he may excavate
another worm-eaten truth
only she could understand.

"The Star Dreamers" and "Tale of the Dream Merchant" and "The Wordmonger's Tale"

A trio of poetic tales about words and the dreams they induce. In the first, the cryogenically frozen dream (that word again). While the dreamers dream they seem younger than they are having lived a thousand lives, this time the dreamers are not doers but merely dreamers whose lives have passed them by.

The latter two deal with the dealers themselves. The first wonders why he's imprisoned for giving dreams, for easing lives with fantasies. The second understands that lamentably his words have been twisted into battle cries.

"Lesions of Genetic Sin" and "Pavane for a Cyber-Princess" and "In Far Pale Clarity"

These three are the pinnacle (or nadir, depending on your perspective) of Boston's pyrotechnic, jazz-like experimentations with sound and style--"so far off Broadway" as it were. These test your stamina to read poetry.  And why not?  It's not like every poem is quite this challenging. But this is where Boston picks up the gauntlet he threw down in "Confessions".

I and Bruce Boston discuss the poems here ("Lesions") and here ("Pavane" and "Clarity"). I will merely add that upon this new reading of "Pavane" it reads like either a writerly (muse and/or trope) or feminist challenge to writers who use the Cyber-Princess. The opening to "Lesions" reads like the above invitation to challenging poetry (apologies since Blogger won't let me simulate the original shape of the poem):

loosen your collar your tie
& let the bruised &
bloodied vocabularies
of the urban night descend between
your cool shirt & warm belly

Review: Dark Roads by Bruce Boston (pt 3: Boston takes on Bostonian style)

• The overview of Bruce Boston's collection is here.
• Part 2: Opening Poems
• Part 4: The U-Turn
• Part 5: The Harvest
• Final Part: 6: Circling Back

Notes on individual poems:

"In the Darkened Hours"

While not his first Rhysling winner, it is his first in the collection.  It followed a Rhysling winner from the previous year.  It does not yet fully bear the earmarks of the Bostonian style. It nears. Mostly I suspect, this win liberated his style, given some lead way to dabble and experiment, which I will comment on more fully in the next post.

This may the poem the collection's title refers to, which may be a keystone holding up the collection. It states:

So you must travel alone
without weapons or maps
to the house of your father

It is traveling back to roots though where it is is not clear.

We were given dreams earlier (see Part 2: Opening Poems), but the dreams gain a darker tint from the the title but also from the phrasing: "you call it a dream." Not it is a dream, but you call it that. It may not be. Also, the poem begins with the refrain, "So you are lost again", as if this were a previous, continuous if possibly unpleasant conversation picked up again.

"Three Evocations of the Mutant Rain Forest" and "A Missionary of the Mutant Rain Forest" 

These placed third and fourth in the Asimov's Reader Poll, so they had some popularity. More remarkable, though, is that these show more of the Boston style--his penchant for the unusual word and densely packed poetry, full of adjectives: "it swells like a gargantuan amoeba in mitosis" and "A poison rain/ of defoliants and excoriation falls in waves" and "they divinate its growth/ and foretell our changeling future." and "scattered shards of unthatched sky".

My favorite of the two would be the latter, wherein a missionary is forced to convert to the Mutant Rain Forest's deity of cats.

"The Last Existentialist" and "The Last Existentialist Continues His Descent into the Maelstrom of the Twenty-First Century . . . Contemplating the Death of Shadows . . . Suffering a Hostile Glance as He Moves along the Quay"

I discuss "The Last Existentialist" favorably and in some detail here. I will just add that Boston re-paints the trope of Last Man as an absurd existentialist figure:

“Why?” he asks the butcher,
the baker, the man who mists
the vegetables with a spray
he suspects may contain
something more than water. 

As the rest of “humanity”
rushes or jogs past him

"In the Short Seasons of a Long Year without You"

 A kind of anti-love love poem where the persona waits too long for his beloved.

Review: Dark Roads by Bruce Boston (pt 2: Opening Poems)

• The overview of Bruce Boston's collection is here.
• Part 3: Boston Hones the Bostonian Style
• Part 4: The U-Turn
• Part 5: The Harvest
• Final Part: 6: Circling Back

These are notes on individual poems:

"The Tiger Does Not Know"

The opening salvo seems to set up the poet's modus operandi: The poet, the lone wanderer amid jungles whose writing:

we could not read...
a loose plenum of graphite bones
treading the white water of the page. 

He wrote that he was trying to live à terre
like the king who spends his life in the saddle. 

He wrote that he was dedicating himself
to the transcription of realities.
He wrote that he was weary of “endless
first person confessionals wrung from
the pistils of wilting flower souls.”

Note the paradoxical desire to write realities within a frame of unreality. This changes except for the inner realities, but even this changes from poem to poem. It closes, encapsulating that in writing the writer is named, "The tiger does not know that it is tiger named" -- ironic given the rejection of confessional poetry (popular in 1971).

"The Walnut Dark Sea Is Blooming Swiftly"

This meditative poem on dreams has a fairly effective refrain repeated in slightly different guises:

The desire is light and the flesh is heavy.
The dream is light and the flesh is heavy
and the walnut dark sea is blooming swiftly.

It may remain forever fallow, unplowed, or consume us:

like a flame-drawn moth
which pauses at the moment of incineration, our
carriage reins short before the bulk of its blackness.

 "The Stardrifter Grounded" and "Human Remains"

These two Boston plants his flag firmly in the speculative field with one poem whose drifter is now among the stars, thinking of settling down.amid an alien world. I love that he reads the union notices.

The second is a triptych amid human-like being--android, mutants, and cyborg--reflecting on what remains of their humanity. These very much taste of the era they were written in, but with some stylistic flair that had waned briefly in this era:

he staggers into the... night,
bare to the waist, his belly
gray-haired and round as a pot,
still hard beneath the aging flesh.

and

Though now in factory wombs
and factory towers
we have bred our selves
with random circuits

Review: Dark Roads by Bruce Boston (an overview)

This is the overview. The following discuss the career-retrospective collection in detail:

• Part 2: Opening Poems
• Part 3: Boston Hones the Bostonian Style
• Part 4: The U-Turn
• Part 5: The Harvest
• Final Part: 6: Circling Back

I have reviewed several of the long poems collected in this career retrospective (forty-one years: 1971-2012) here and here at SF Site.* Back then, "She Was There for Him the Last Time" was a favorite, and "The Last Existentialist" well pleased.

For the voters of the Rhysling award, both "In the Darkened Hours" and "Confessions of a Body Thief" won the award while "Dark Rains Here and There" and "Pavane for a Cyber-Princess" were runner-ups. "The Lesions of Genetic Sin" placed third. This collection is up for the Bram Stoker award for best poetry collection and looks to be a strong contender.

What strikes me on rereading these is the remarkable road map of Boston's career, the main routes and subsequent detours. It not only made a U-turn but also circled back.

He opens with a surrealistic look at what his generation is concerned with, and later makes a break both in viewpoint and treatment. Along this dark road, he develops the Bostonian™ voice and, finally, uses that voice to reexamine the world from Boston's own surrealistic stance.

M. Wayne Miller beautifully illustrates the collection. A sampler (four long poems and accompanying illustrations) can be found here.  I highly recommend it as it contains much of Boston's best work. I'll reread it again to see if I have more to add.

*Rereading the reviews was like running into a doppelganger--someone who could have been me but wasn't. The humor and length surprised me as my review methodology has changed since becoming a teacher:  more "Get in and get out." Say what needs to be said and no more, but longer reviews have their pleasures.

Scenes Along the Zombie Highway by G.O. Clark

G.O. Clark's work has nominated for a number of awards. He won the Asimov's readers' poll, was runner-up in the Rhysling and a finalist in the Stoker award.

Humor characterizes his latest collection of... zombie poetry. Just when you didn't think you could add any new wrinkles to the subgenre. Many of these basically ask, "What would happen if [insert occupation here] were to become a zombie?" A number of his answers will provide a chuckle, e.g.:

Well-behaved zombies
are always welcome at political
rallies, church services and
golf tournaments.

The opening salvo is essentially an introduction to the collection.  The second "Little Zombies" may be the most funny clever of the lot playing on the words "Trick or Treat." One of his new takes (or new to me) is the freezing of zombies during winter in "Seasons of the Living Dead".

Perhaps the most crafty--at least it tricked me at first--was "Saturday Night Social Scene". Upon my first reading, I thought the zombies had something of volition and ambition, but the wording is so smooth on this one, he's got it playing both ways, an imaginary intelligence overlaid them. Mark this one as definitely worth reading if you're interested in the field.

Other zombies include clowns, ventriloquists, Christmas carolers, cartoon characters, and policemen.  The most interesting of the occupation imaginings might be carpenters in "You Just Can't Get Good Help Anymore" which ends:

Their constructions
are surreal, no two houses alike,
the carpenter's level unused,
2x4 framework a twisted nightmare
like the carpenters themselves.

Although it makes sense to end the poem on what it would be like to be the poor misunderstood "Last Zombie", my favorite ending would have been from "Two Drink Minimum":

this final night
of the human species
spreading across the dying Earth
like a long, drawn out,
toxic breath.

Links to Writing Opportunities

Submit to Interzone online

Ten ways to win the Booker prize

Tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Tomorrow Project contest:

1. Who? 13-25 year olds worldwide
2. What? science fiction stories, essays, comics and videos about the future

Terry Windling's poetry challenge 

Other challenges