The Master Writes
Nov. 10th, 2024 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidkmElgin, Suzette Haden, 2007, Twenty-one novel poems, Sam's Dot publishing, Box 782, Cedar Rapids, IA 52406-0782, www.samsdotpublishing.com, 1-933556-95-1, 978-1-933556-95-6, cover by Marge Simon, perfect bound, 102 p., $9.95.
Suzette Haden Elgin, founder of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and author of the only book about how to write science fiction poetry, has gone over the top once more. In this case, we have 21 of her poems, accompanied by a study guide with explanations of the poems and thoughtful questions we should mull over. The book also contains, for four of the poems, URLs that lead to drafts of the poems and some of the e-mail discussions that helped the author revise them. This part is even interactive; you can participate in discussions about the poems online. Further, these are all "what if" poems. Each of them could've been written as a story; many could've been novels.
"What we can see now, looking in the glass," extrapolates the world's present water crisis in an all too realistic way. Water is heavily subsidized. What if we had to pay what it really cost?
In "Unintended consequences, heaven knows," Elgin considers at length the possibilities of the United States becoming a Christian nation with school prayer constitutional and universal. What might make those in power regret allowing students to pray at will? What, after all, is prayer supposed to be able to accomplish?
They can do things to patients in hospitals ... stop their bleeding;
stop their pain; straighten their spines; make tumors disappear.
They can play with the weather – they can make a storm approach a coast
Later she asks what this might do to the healthcare industry. A few moments thought along these lines makes you wonder just what fundamentalist authority figures think they're really doing when they advocate for school prayer. Perhaps they don't believe it's as efficacious as it might be.
I don't think Elgin has written very many poems lately. (Many of those in this book are not new, although most of us will never have seen any of them before.) It's too bad, if I'm right that she's not writing much poetry these days, because she would wipe up the floor with most of us. Who else could write such a moving poem about bacterial poets? But get this, there are two poems here about intelligent bacteria. Or at least bacteria that might be intelligent. People in science fiction stories often say something like "we are no more than bacteria to them." What if that was literally true? In "Psalm to a higher power" Elgin seriously considers the implications of this question.
In "Happyvalentine," Elgin describes sexual politics among aliens that are physically most unlike us. It is hard to picture, from her description, exactly what they look like. However, politics is politics, and the aliens are not so different after all. The female wants what any human woman might want after most of a lifetime as second fiddle.
You asked what I wanted, Dearlove, as Fusing-Gift.
After all these years.
I want the chair at the university
and all that goes with it.
In "lost in orbit," nursing homes are placed in orbit, presumably because brittle bones are more comfortable in low-gravity conditions.
to abandon an old woman,
to leave her floating in a spacepod,
tethered to the outside wall
of a nursing home in orbit
This poem combines eldercare, linguistics, geriatrics, and stupid laws. I don't know that this prediction strikes me as on the money, because of the cost of getting people into orbit, but it is certainly food for thought, and a very entertaining poem.
The poems occupy 60% of this book. The remainder consists of reader guides: brief discussions of the poems' meaning, followed by questions and topics for discussion. If you wanted to teach literary criticism of science fiction poetry, this book would get you halfway there.
This handsome volume of poetry and commentary by one of science fiction's foremost poets is really a must have for any serious science fiction poet and anybody serious about reading science fiction poetry.
Suzette Haden Elgin, founder of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and author of the only book about how to write science fiction poetry, has gone over the top once more. In this case, we have 21 of her poems, accompanied by a study guide with explanations of the poems and thoughtful questions we should mull over. The book also contains, for four of the poems, URLs that lead to drafts of the poems and some of the e-mail discussions that helped the author revise them. This part is even interactive; you can participate in discussions about the poems online. Further, these are all "what if" poems. Each of them could've been written as a story; many could've been novels.
"What we can see now, looking in the glass," extrapolates the world's present water crisis in an all too realistic way. Water is heavily subsidized. What if we had to pay what it really cost?
In "Unintended consequences, heaven knows," Elgin considers at length the possibilities of the United States becoming a Christian nation with school prayer constitutional and universal. What might make those in power regret allowing students to pray at will? What, after all, is prayer supposed to be able to accomplish?
They can do things to patients in hospitals ... stop their bleeding;
stop their pain; straighten their spines; make tumors disappear.
They can play with the weather – they can make a storm approach a coast
Later she asks what this might do to the healthcare industry. A few moments thought along these lines makes you wonder just what fundamentalist authority figures think they're really doing when they advocate for school prayer. Perhaps they don't believe it's as efficacious as it might be.
I don't think Elgin has written very many poems lately. (Many of those in this book are not new, although most of us will never have seen any of them before.) It's too bad, if I'm right that she's not writing much poetry these days, because she would wipe up the floor with most of us. Who else could write such a moving poem about bacterial poets? But get this, there are two poems here about intelligent bacteria. Or at least bacteria that might be intelligent. People in science fiction stories often say something like "we are no more than bacteria to them." What if that was literally true? In "Psalm to a higher power" Elgin seriously considers the implications of this question.
In "Happyvalentine," Elgin describes sexual politics among aliens that are physically most unlike us. It is hard to picture, from her description, exactly what they look like. However, politics is politics, and the aliens are not so different after all. The female wants what any human woman might want after most of a lifetime as second fiddle.
You asked what I wanted, Dearlove, as Fusing-Gift.
After all these years.
I want the chair at the university
and all that goes with it.
In "lost in orbit," nursing homes are placed in orbit, presumably because brittle bones are more comfortable in low-gravity conditions.
to abandon an old woman,
to leave her floating in a spacepod,
tethered to the outside wall
of a nursing home in orbit
This poem combines eldercare, linguistics, geriatrics, and stupid laws. I don't know that this prediction strikes me as on the money, because of the cost of getting people into orbit, but it is certainly food for thought, and a very entertaining poem.
The poems occupy 60% of this book. The remainder consists of reader guides: brief discussions of the poems' meaning, followed by questions and topics for discussion. If you wanted to teach literary criticism of science fiction poetry, this book would get you halfway there.
This handsome volume of poetry and commentary by one of science fiction's foremost poets is really a must have for any serious science fiction poet and anybody serious about reading science fiction poetry.
