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Reged: Feb 16 2004
Posts: 1166
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This thread is for comments about Speculative Poetry: A Symposium, Part 2 of 2, by T. Goss, M. Allen, A. DeNiro, M. Cheney
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Anonymous
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This article, both parts of it, except for Mike Allen's comments, struck me as stuffy academic. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I've always viewed Strange Horizons as a publication that speaks to contemporary readers.
Strictly from an egomaniac point of view, I don't see how a two-part article that addresses contemporary speculative, genre, SF/F/H poetry, can not mention me one time. Over the last twenty plus years I've won far more awards (Rhysling, Asimov's, Stoker. etc.) in the field than any other poet, appeared in more major venues, published more books of speculative/genre poetry than any other poet besides the British phenomenon Steve Sneyd, received more reviews and comments from critics and other writers (Kim Stanley Robinson, Lawrence Watt-Evans, David Kopaska Merkel, etc., quotes available on request) acclaiming me as the major poet in the field.
Apart from the egomaniac view, this article may be a plus in terms of promoting genre poetry, but I wish that more than one of the participants was really in touch with the field as it stands today.
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Mary Agner
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I know many folks have a love-to-hate relationship with Poetry magazine, but was anyone else surprised (or pleasantly surprised) to see these two lines, smack-dab in the middle of the first page of the May 2005 issue in Craig Arnold's poem "Incubus":
If you're not using your body right now
maybe you'd let me borrow it for a while?
which actually refers to an incubus?
Any comments on genre poetry appearing in such a mainstream magazine?
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Mike Allen
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Any comments on genre poetry appearing in such a mainstream magazine?
Well, actually, the previous issue contained a poem by J. Allyn Rosser, "You've Got It Made," that is basically a science fiction poem, though it studiously avoids any mention of technology or use of jargon, I guess thus making itself more palatable to the Poetry audience. So it's not unprecedented.
I've already told Bruce (I'm now addressing his post above) that he did in fact appear in the original draft of the symposium, but with us three chatterbrains churning out 15,000 words of copy, Matt C. had to make some cuts somewhere. I'm sure Matt meant no slight.
As for being "in touch" -- well, in all fairness, I think Alan, Dora and I run within circles (meaning "groups of like-mind people") that are all active in the here and now but don't much interact, which I believe is why Matt threw us together. Personally, I had a blast!
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Kyle Niedzwiecki
Senior Articles Editor
Reged: Oct 29 2004
Posts: 12
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Quote:
This article, both parts of it, except for Mike Allen's comments, struck me as stuffy academic. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I've always viewed Strange Horizons as a publication that speaks to contemporary readers.
Strange Horizons is devoted to speculative fiction in all its incarnations. From the perspective of the Articles department, we were quite excited when Matt Cheney approached us with this project. All the participants put a great deal of time and effort into the symposium, and we are quite proud of the result.
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Strictly from an egomaniac point of view, I don't see how a two-part article that addresses contemporary speculative, genre, SF/F/H poetry, can not mention me one time.
I'm very sorry that the symposium didn't touch on your work, but when trying to cover a genre in 9000 words (pared down from an original 15,000), some aspects and authors will perforce be left out.
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Apart from the egomaniac view, this article may be a plus in terms of promoting genre poetry, but I wish that more than one of the participants was really in touch with the field as it stands today.
We are always looking for more submissions, and we would welcome a response to the symposium. It was the hope of all involved that it would provoke discussion. If you are interested, I suggest you take a look at our guidelines page.
-- Kyle Niedzwiecki
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Kyle Niedzwiecki
Senior Articles Editor
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Mary Agner
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Quote:
Well, actually, the previous issue contained a poem by J. Allyn Rosser, "You've Got It Made," that is basically a science fiction poem, though it studiously avoids any mention of technology or use of jargon, I guess thus making itself more palatable to the Poetry audience. So it's not unprecedented.
Now you've made me wonder: given that it lacks these two items, although you feel it's a genre poem, is it the sort of poem that would be accepted for publication in a genre magazine?
I feel there's something different about it (and the Rosser poem), and it may just be the two items you mention, but I'm unsatisfied with that explanation because it seems to say that only the diction/language differentiates between genre and non-genre poems.
(For those who are interested to read "Incubus", Poetry has it on their site.)
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Mike Allen
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[I feel there's something different about it (and the Rosser poem), and it may just be the two items you mention, but I'm unsatisfied with that explanation because it seems to say that only the diction/language differentiates between genre and non-genre poems.
Different editors have wildly different tastes, so it's hard for me to say specifically what genre outlets might have bought either of those poems. "Incubus" is more obviously a genre poem in the way I tend to think of them, in that it's made clear the body-switching really happens. This is used more as a platform for a character study than an exploration of the fantasy concept, which actually is pretty much in sync with how many genre publications lean these days. The Rosser poem is full of playful future speculation, but a veteran sf reader might find it has little to offer them in terms of insights. So I'd say that if either author had decided to pass up Poetry Magazine's $6 a line for a genre mag's typical top rate of $1 a line or $20-$25 flat fee, "Incubus" would be the surer bet.
As for the difference, that's hard to quantify, but there surely is one. Is there much crossover between the audiences for, say, The Handmaid's Tale and The Foundation Trilogy? Honestly, I don't know, but I'd guess not.
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David Moles
Regular reader
Reged: Jan 07 2004
Posts: 65
Loc: Basel, Switzerland
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Is there much crossover between the audiences for, say, The Handmaid's Tale and the Foundation trilogy? Honestly, I don't know, but I'd guess not.
The Handmaid's Tale, maybe, 'cause it's become more or less canonical; any arbitrary Atwood and any arbitrary Asimov, though, probably not.
I think someone (Dora?) touched on this in the symposium, but fantastic poetry, as distinct from science-fictional poetry, does seem much more at home in the mainstream. I know folks who consider science fiction something they've grown out of who don't have any trouble throwing a werewolf or a Greek myth into their poetry, and I know fantastic poetry doesn't set off my own fight-or-flight response the way science-fictional poetry does.
I was a little disappointed to find the discussion in Part 2 apparently so grounded in what seemed like the poetic equivalent of fiction's Wonderful Power of Storytelling approach -- the one that grounds modern speculative fiction in a tradition going back through "The Tempest" and the Divine Comedy and Beowulf to Homer and the Bible and cave-folk telling stories around campfires. Not that I don't think that viewpoint has merit, but because it seems to me to be, more than anything, about defending Our Beloved Genre from (often imagined) mainstream slings and arrows, at the expense of exploring (constructing, deconstructing, interrogating even?) the multifariety within speculative fiction -- or speculative poetry. Fantastic poetry I think I have a handle on; it's science fictional poetry that I want to understand.
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-- David
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Mike Allen
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Fantastic poetry I think I have a handle on; it's science fictional poetry that I want to understand.
What don't you understand?
What makes that sort of question hard for me to address (maybe someone else would want to) is that I can write a poem with sf trappings, and then write a poem with fantasy trappings, and think nothing of "switching gears." The outward feel might seem radically different to a reader, but the mindset creating it isn't, necessarily. To me these modes are simply two fingers on the same glove. I've always found it a little puzzling that other readers/writers have such wildly different reactions to the forms, but on the other hand, I think that might put me in the minority.
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David Moles
Regular reader
Reged: Jan 07 2004
Posts: 65
Loc: Basel, Switzerland
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I don't have any trouble shifting modes either, as a writer, but as a reader I do (while there are certainly a lot of debatable cases) know the difference when I see it.
I guess what I don't understand is what science fiction poetry is trying to do. I mean, I know it could be trying to do a lot of different things. But fantastic poetry seems to me to be trying to do pretty much the same kinds of things that any other sort of poetry is trying to do, and in a way that's accessible to pretty much the same readers as any other sort of poetry. Science fiction prose, well, I'm familiar with a number of complementary and contradictory explanations for that. (And probably believe most of them at various times, according to some sort of rota system.) Science fiction poetry, though -- it seems to me to fall into this uneasy space where it's either science fiction for poetry fans (probably a thankless task, but potentially interesting) or poetry for science fiction fans (not pointless but, it seems to me, perhaps unnecessarily limiting).
(I'm tarring with an awfully big brush, I know. Poems that throw in a djinn or an Orpheus reference are a different animal from poems purporting to be the oral literature of a fantastic subcreation; poems hailing the victorious dead of a far-future space war are a different animal from poems mourning the dissolution of a loved one's personality into post-Singularity fragments.
I know I must sound -- not to flaunt it in front of any Gethenian Taoists out there -- exceedingly ignorant. I'd sound less ignorant if, well, I were less ignorant. That's why I want to know more.
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-- David
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