 Poetry: May 27, 2020 Issue [#10196] |
This week: Poetry of the Sci-Fi kind! Edited by: eyestar~*  
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 Happy May days, lovers of poetry! I am delighted to be your guest editor this week! I was peering around reading poetry and found some sci fi ku! So the muse lead me to explore the theme of science fiction poetry! 
"Emerson has written that the poet is the only true doctor. I believe him, for the poet, lacking the impediment of speech with which the rest of us are afflicted, gazes, records, diagnoses, and prophesies."
— Richard Selzer; Mortal Lessons, page 16 |
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 It was only in the 1930's that the Speculative fiction genres like Fantasy and Science Fiction stories began to be established as genres and it took longer for the notion of Sci-fi poems to be a category! After all is it a poem or science fiction? 
 In 1978, The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, was created by Suzette Haden-Elgin, as she saw the need to create a place to honour these features. Her article, http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/SFPoetry.html, provides her rationale! Her organization supports The Rhysling Awards each year for best sci fi long and short poems. They are named for the blind poet Rhysling in Robert A. Heinlein’s short story “The Green Hills of Earth.” so If you are one of these writers, check it out! 
 However you define poetry, expression with a science-fiction theme are popular and why not let astronauts, aliens, computers, weird creatures have a lyrical expression. It is a real gift to use scientific and technological vocabulary and concepts in a poetic way...whether in a specific form, or free style, epic or story poem narrative! Freedom to express a message, warning, or get us thinking out side the box or just to entertain is the vital element. And it is the Aquarian Age!! 
I remember Dragon Riders of Pern by Anne Mcaffrey, had its poetic additions like:
"Seas boil and mountains move,
Sands heat, dragons prove
Red Star passes,
Stones piles and fires burn,
Green withers, arm Pern.
Guard all passes.
Star Stone watch, scan sky.
Ready the Weyrs, all riders fly;
Red Star Passes."
and one of the most known sic fi poems..Space Oddity, from a songwriter David Bowie is a fine example of sci-fi poem inviting us to wonder how we’d react in extreme situations like Tom whose spaceship is failing—and maybe shed light on our own humanity. It seems to be one of the elements of the genre.
"This is ground control to major Tom, you've really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare
This is major Tom to ground control, I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today
Here am I sitting in a tin can far above the world
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do. "
  Back in 1956, Aniara was written by Swedish Nobel laureate(1974) Harry Martinson. He was inspired by a view of the Adromeda galaxy and wrote this epic poem about the trials of Mars colonists on their ship and their compassionate computer Mina. Today there is lots of talk and activity about the potential of going to Mars and how we might live there. began to write Aniara in 1953 following Soviet Union's nuclear weapon tests and inspired by a view of the Andromeda Galaxy he had seen. It is 103 cantos...too long to add here so hopefully a quote will give an idea:
"We're slowly coming to suspect that the space
we're traveling in is of a different sort
from what we thought whenever that word "space"
was decked out by our fantasies on Earth.
We're coming to suspect now that our drift
is even deeper then we first believed,
that knowledge is a blue naiveté
which with a measured quantity of insight
imagined that the Mystery has structure.
We now suspect that what we claim is space
and glassy clarity around Aniara’s hull
is spirit, everlasting and impalpable,
that we have strayed in spiritual seas."
From my reading I found a variety of Poem styles...some more narrative in nature and with a futuristic spark of imaginative potentials. I found this one by : where people have a limited amount of words they can use a day.... talk about government control.... I guess I better learn To Twitter!
"The Quiet World, Jeffrey McDaniel
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe."
Soource:https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49238/the-quiet-world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UhkIcVPG8U
On a different path there are many poems of transformation like: Attack of the Crab Monsters by Lawrence Rabb, which inspired a movie about people turning into crabs, though several critics like the poem better! LOL
Here is a quote from the poem...the last verses:
..."I’m not used to all these
legs, these claws, these feelers.
It’s the old story, predictable
as fallout—the rearrangement of molecules.
And everyone is surprised
and no one understands
why each man tries to kill
the thing he loves, when the change
comes over him. So now you know
what I never found the time to say.
Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower.
You know I always loved you."
http://www.speechlessthemagazine.org/raab%20poems.htm
If poetry entertains, evokes thought, emotional reaction, suggest a lesson, sci fi poems I have read certainly fit the Type!  Even when applied to my favourite style: haiku! Yep science fiction entered the world of haiku too with sci-fi ku:
According to the SciFaiku manifesto by Tom Brinck in 1995:
"SciFaiku is a distinctive and powerful form of expression for science fiction. It packs all the human insight, technology, and vision of the future into a few poignant lines."
Before it became a "THING" with its own name: Karen Anderson wrote science fiction haiku in 1962 in (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,
Those crisp cucumbers
Not yet planted in Syrtis --
How I desire one!
I first heard of the form from our own Uncommonspirit  who has an amazing collection! "Scifaiku Poetry"
 
Say Hooray for Sci-fi poets honouring science and futuristic themes with heart and vision!
The sky is indeed the limit!
Thanks for reading.
eyestar
Interesting Sources:
https://www.sfpoetry.com/
Rhysling Award Winner
http://peterpayack.info/id4.html
Translated from the Swedish: Aniara: https://gsproject.edublogs.org/gs-texts/texts-used-in-2017/aniara-by-harry-marti...
https://www.sfpoetry.com/rhysling.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_poetry
https://io9.gizmodo.com/crabmonsters-and-sentient-darkness-ten-great-scifi-poe-5...
https://bookriot.com/2019/01/31/speculative-poetry/
http://www.scifaiku.com/what/
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Wow! WDC has a whole galaxy of sci fi poetry in cyberspace!  To find more go to Browse by Genre: Science fiction and narrow down your search by choosing Poetry at the bottom of that genre page.
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| |  | Space Worm (13+)
A poem about a big space worm that eats planets and asteroids and stuff
#2200417 by Returbis |
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 Share a favourite sci-fi poem! 
Thank you for your kind responses for:"Poetry Newsletter (April 29, 2020)"
Lilith 🎄 Christmas Cheer 
"Awesome job on the newsletter, Mona. Enjoyed it very much. Kindest Regards, Lilli"
Teneth 
"PIERCE
Sharp, slim and shining
Your works have been puzzling
Little yet torn covering
Your humility has been amazing
You slipped through my mouth
You explored my hidden intensity
In hope for serenity
You pierced my heart"
Wow. Powerful tone and image. Thanks for sharing your gift! |
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