davidkm | Entries tagged with myth

Yolen, Jane, 2012, The Last Selchie Child, A Midsummer Night's Press (www.spdbooks.org; orders@spdbooks.org), Cover photograph by M. A. Mathews, ISBN-13:978-0-9794208-9-4, perfect bound, 66 pages, $14.95.

Jane Yolen is one of our venerable masters, both of fiction and poetry. She won the Rhysling award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association in 1993, as well as many other awards, some far more prestigious. Yolen was named SFPA Grand Master in 2010. It is always a pleasure to open one of her books for the first time. The Last Selchie Child is a collection of fairy tales retold as poems, 36 of them, including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and Little Red Riding Hood, just to name four.

I lied already. The first part of the book is a group of poems about stories and storytelling. From “Story”:

You shape a tale
To fit your mind.

And so it goes,
In re-creation,
Mouth-to-ear
Resuscitation,

Several poems deal with the legends of people who can be seals or seals who can be people. There is plenty of room for sorrow and betrayal in a situation like this. From “The Selchie's Children's Plaint”:

She leaves us then, without a word
wading into her future.
It hurts like a knife
skinning us as we watch her go.
We were the ones
who were to dive into another life.

Some of these poems look at fairytale stories from new perspectives. Instead of the omniscient narrator, we see things from the point of view of the woman, the child, the prince. This is indeed a fruitful kind of reversal, pointing out the dark underbelly or ludicrousness of the traditional versions of these stories. But sometimes the shift in perspective shows us more. “Knives” reveals more horror in Cinderella than the by-now familiar idea of what happens after the wedding. Cinderella might not have been the naïve young thing most of us thought.

I spoke to the prince in that secret tongue,
the diplomacy of courting.
he using shoes, I using glass,
and all my sisters saw was a slipper,
too long in the heel,
too short at the toe.
What else could they use but a knife?

Fair young things seem to wait so long for something to happen, in fairy tales. How long is too long? From “Tower”:

I have found
the small barred window,
where I sing each morning
to any passing prince.
Be he large or small, handsome or plain,
I will have him.

After a while, you wait your life away, and anything at all becomes enough. How much becomes plain, although unstated, in a clear-eyed reading of fairy tales? The most interesting thing about this book, for me, is that familiar fairy tales are re-imagined in several different ways in different poems. We don't end up with simply two perspectives, but three, four, and perhaps others that we can imagine for ourselves, now that the way has been shown.

The last section of the book consists of a group of poems about “truth,” which is to say that the stories we have been told are wrong, wrong, wrong. Indeed they are! From “Women's Stories”:

Job's wife had her own story.
Lot's pillar of salt cried tears
indistinguishable from her eyes.
Who invented a glass slipper
never had to dance.

It might be needless to say I think you should buy this book. But just in case, I'll say it. You really should buy this book. You won't be sorry.

Virtes, S. C., 2008, Improbable Jane: 3 odd odysseys: perfect bound, cover by Scott Virtes, www.samsdotpublishing.com, $8, 70 pages.

This book contains three long poems entitled "Jane Doe discovered," "The improbable notebook of Jason V--," and "Cougar village."

"Jane Doe discovered" is a story of secret hospital prisons, chemical torture, you know the drill. It is very well written and engaging. However, I wondered why. Why was Jane Doe stuck in her predicament? Maybe the explanation was in there, but I didn't see it.

"The improbable notebook..." is about a crazy inventor. Or maybe he's not so crazy. If you make a world-shattering discovery, should you tell people?

The last of this trio of poems is written in the style of a Native American folk tale.

Vanderhooft, JoSelle, 2007, The Minotaur's Last Letter To His Mother, 60 p., saddle stitched with glossy card-stock cover, 18 poems (5 new), cover painting and a few B&W interiors by Marge Simon, Ash Phoenix Books, $8.95.

"Minotaur" is myth retold and re-examined, myth invented, and folktales transformed into myth. In the title poem, the Minotaur tries to explain both himself and his mother, to her. Vanderhooft dissects this rather unpleasant myth and finds that it's rather more unpleasant than we thought at first. I did feel sorry for this creature who could never have been allowed to live his own life in Minoan Crete. Actually, that would be impossible today, although he would be imprisoned in a different kind of labyrinth. Vanderhooft turns this legend on its head a couple of different ways. She makes us see the story from the monster's side (and is he really the monster anyway?) and we're forced to consider motivations and implications of behavior that we suddenly see as requiring justification as sensible. You can't just plug in the monster and let the story run its course. We have to know why people do things. When the story was a myth we did not necessarily expect the characters to behave like human beings, but now we have to look them in the eye.

The book forces us to re-examine some other myths. Pluto is not a god anymore:

"Let them
draw up their contracts,
realign their charts,
downgrade him from a planet to a stone."

Here, dryads become more than we have known. There is a lot more to making a tree than you might think:

"Her palms, stronger than time, pressed the seed like clay
fresh from the wheel, while she, laughing, sang
the chorus that would guide it through the air
until it flowered"

When a dryad is evicted by the axe, worlds die.

There are myths here about anorexia, the Sphinx, the Kraken, Jesus and Mary, Snow White, and many more. And after all the death of a dryad or of a man bull is not the most harrowing of these.

The book looks very nice, and I really like Marge Simon's cover illustration, but I can hardly believe the publisher neglected to put any contact information on the book. It doesn't do any good to publish a book, IF YOU DON'T TELL ANYONE how to reach you! Okay, maybe the Strangelove reference isn't working, especially because a brief search of the Internet reveals that Ash Phoenix Books is an imprint of Gromagon Press (http://www.gromagonpress.com/), and now you know where to go to buy a copy.

Sneyd, Steve, ed., 2005, Medusa, a poetry anthology, Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire HD5 8PB England, ISBN 0 905262 37 9, £3.99/$9, checks payable to S. Sneyd. Saddle stitched 58 pages + card stock cover.

Steve Sneyd is well-known for his scholarship concerning genre poetry and for his distinctive writing style. This is by no means the first book he has edited, but you rarely see an anthology of poetry with such a specific theme. Perhaps only Steve could get away with that. "Medusa" is remarkably diverse, attesting both to the fascination that the Medusa legend holds for writers and to the ambiguity of the legend itself, which gives free rein for experimentation in quite a few directions.

The book is divided into 6 sections. The first, UK Poets, accounts for a little more than half of the book. The remainder consists of Overseas Poets, Notes, Contributor Data, Medusa in Poetry, and The Medusa Legend. The notes were quite fascinating and I found the brief summary of the legend comprehensive. Every part of this book belongs. Nine of the poems in this book were previously published, but that leaves 33 new in this publication. I particularly like the graphic image of Medusa on the cover, which is by Andy Cocker. Nearly 2 dozen small, stark images are scattered strategically through the book. Disclaimer: one of the poems in this book is by me.

What if Medusa did not understand her power? In "Medusa" by a. f. harrold, we encounter this

_Sometimes I hear movement -- the shifting aside of grass or
the pricking of thorn -- but when I investigate I find there
nothing but stonework and then chill night envelops me._

This book explores many viewpoints and possibilities. From "Medusa's Legacy," by John Light

_"It smiled at me,
the statue smiled."_

From “Auto da fe” by Susie Reynolds:

_At the trial Medusa was examined
Lost in coils they analyse
"Snakes = Lost Eden"
Her golden body, tossed_

Oh my God, buy this book! If you're like me you will not care for every poem in this anthology, but the aggregate is like a composite photograph. Stand close to the picture and you see a myriad of individual small photographs, which may be quite unlike one another. Step back far enough and you see the Medusa, emerging as the product of a subtle reaction among her multifarious parts.

Mythic Delirium 17 (Summer/Fall 2007) (info at [http://mythicdelirium.com/]) is the most-recent issue of this poetry-only print magazine.

MD 17 contains 21 poems by as many poets. Most of these poems are mythic and most of them are fantasy. There is such a thing as mythic science fiction, and there is some here. Or maybe it's mythic fantasy and science fiction stuck together like a Reese's peanut butter cup. Illustrations include a wraparound color cover by Tim Mullins and black-and-white interior illustrations, all evidently commissioned to accompany particular poems, by several artists. Graphically, the only false note is struck by the inside covers, which are covered with a grid of alternating white and gray skulls on gray and white background. It seems more silly than anything else.

One of my favorite poems in this issue is "Weightless," by K. S. Hardy. This short free-verse fantasy poem toys with the reader, seeming to lead in one direction, only to pivot in the last stanza and deliver a zinger. I don't want to give away the story so I won't quote any of the poem here. I can say that I have read many of Hardy's poems over the years and I think this is one of the very best.

I also like "Nine days out --" by Jaime Lee Moyer. This poem is science fiction, and free verse, but that's not a surprise. Almost every poem in Mythic Delirium is free verse, and the remainder are prose poems (1) or haiku (a couple). The poem describes capture of animals for extraterrestrial zoos or collectors. Here is a snippet.

Only nine days out and months to go,
time enough to worry he won't survive,
time enough to fashion excuses
for disappointed collectors,
more than time to speculate which
parts of you they'll cut off first

And then there is "Fitcher's Third Wife," by Leah Bobet. A free-verse fantasy poem, with a kick.

They tell stories about third daughters
because no one wants a fourth.
It doesn't take long, laugh the men in the kitchen
for a soul to get tired of daughters.

This is a hard and realistic look at a fantasy trope, just the sort of thing I have come to expect from Bobet. Girls will be girls, and men will be men, and in real life neither girls, nor men, nor medieval farm life, are anything like the way they have been represented in fairy tales.

In "Gleipnir Diaries," by JoSelle Vanderhooft, a Norse myth is retold in the only long poem in this issue of the magazine. A favorite way of writers to look again at the old myths, folktales, and what have you is to ask the question "who really were the bad guys and who the good guys anyway?" Vanderhooft does that here.

Of all my father's monstrous progeny
unlucky in face and limb alike
I was allowed to stay.
"You see," said Father Loki, cuffing me
and rolling up my stomach for their hands.
"He is no different from the hounds.
Look! And such a good dog, too!"

Yes, the myths tell us something about how this began and how it ended, but what went on in between? Inquiring minds can find out now. The Norse gods were mean and they deserved what they got. You could certainly make a case for that, anyway. You could only get into heaven at all by being a particularly successful warrior, which meant that all women, all who died young, and almost everybody else couldn't go there. That doesn't seem very nice, and that doesn't even consider how they treated their enemies. They were condemned to eternal torment! Okay, maybe that isn't particularly unusual for mythologies, but I am with Mr. Horse on this: "No sir, I don't like it." The myth: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenrisulfr]

Classical Greek mythology is retold (and revised) in "Daphne's Myth Revisited" by cythera.

bare trees stood
in terrible attitudes.

Near-deafening music
struck me; I felt it
stitch into my flesh

It probably wasn't fun to have the attention of the classical Greek gods; I think we all know that. But exactly how wasn't it fun? This poem shows one way. More about the myth: [http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_%28mythology%29]

Poets represented in this issue, in addition to those already mentioned, include Darrell Schweitzer, Sonya Taaffe, Debbie Kolodji, and Ann K. Schwader, among others. I would love to tell you about a lot more of them, but you really should just buy the magazine. That way you don't have to subsist on mere excerpts. Besides, I am afraid I have already gone on too long.

Kernaghan, Eileen, 2009, Tales from the holograph woods, speculative poems, Wattle and daub books, Grandview RPO, P.O. Box 78038, Vancouver Canada V5N 5W1, wattleanddaubbooks.ca, perfect bound paperback, ISBN 978-0981-0658, cover painting "On the forest edge" by Henri Rousseau.I do not see a price on the book, but the website lists it at $12.95. Presumably that is Canadian dollars.

I first encountered Kernaghan's work when she submitted a beautiful story called "Dragon-rain" to an anthology (Magic) that my daughter Morgan and I published in 1995. The story is the last one in the book and, if I remember correctly, it received an honorable mention in the Year's best fantasy and horror. I wonder if she sent me this book to review on the strength of that prior connection.

Be that as it may, I was delighted to receive it. Tales from the holograph woods is a slim volume containing 42 poems in four groups: "The dark gardens of the zodiac," "A dance in four dimensions," "Spells and ancient gramaries," and "Out of the midnight forest." There are also two framing poems that are not included in any of the four groups. The acknowledgments page is ambiguous, but appears to imply that all of these poems have been previously published elsewhere, including one in Dreams and Nightmares, long ago.

The first poem, "The dream," sets a tone of reverence, carries a weight of myth, and is meant to be read slowly, or so it strikes me. It's an appropriate beginning for a book full of such poems.

The next poem, "Re-Incarnate," includes the phrase "the dark garden of the zodiac," from which the first section of the book takes its title. It's funny, but the last four lines of this poem appeared overleaf from the main part. And I kind of think the poem is stronger if you stop at the bottom of the page.

I really like this part of the next poem, "In Turing's garden."

In dim undergrowth
the stirring
of vast ambiguous animals

And isn't that exactly the kind of thing we will face when we apply the Turing Test to things we encounter off world or in the lab? I'm really not sure what dark gardens of the zodiac are, because several of the poems in this section are unequivocally science-fiction poems. Then again, they do have a mythic feel. Science, myth, and magic are commingled by Kernaghan in many of these poems. Another example, from "Deus ex machina"

This is the final garden,
the place of logical exhaustion
where time narrows to the last trickle
in a dried-out bed.

Here, she uses a literary term to link the writing process to the cosmos in terms both mathematical (elsewhere in the poem) and mystical, leaving us to wonder whether she is really writing about gardens out in the universe or gardens inside our heads. Or possibly descibing a relationship between mental and physical worlds.

In the next section of the book, "A dance in four dimensions," most of the poems have some explicit reference to dance, although the references are used differently. Dimensions more than four could express the different aspects of dance presented within this suite of poems. Some of the poems also refer fairly explicitly to dimensionality.

From "The idea of order in a Chinese landscape"

The Emperor of China
kneeling at the still pivot of the universe
designs one small pavilion
to hang halfway between the earth and heaven

My favorite in this section is "Broken syllables," in which translations of remnants of ancient Sumerian poems are used to express the inexorable effect of time on human endeavor. Yet the fragments retain their own beauty and power; illustrating another aspect of dimensionality.

Part three of the book isn't really about spells, or at least it is not mostly about spells. It could just as well be said to be about dream, because almost every poem in this section refers to dream or is about a dream. A few of them mention spells or actually are about spells, but to my mind the title of the section is the most opaque of the four.

I feel on my throat
your insubstantial touch,
your chill sweet breath.

would seem a reference to a dream even if the poem didn't say so two lines later. (The Poet-Chansonnier's song from Wild Talent).

By contrast, in "Out of the midnight forest," if the poems don't all refer to midnight, or forests, or both, they all have a darkness about them that is reminiscent of midnight and midnight doings. Anyway, the names of the four sections of this book are taken from lines in the contained poems. By now it's clear they don't necessarily encapsulate the meaning of all poems found therein. Please don't mistake all my wondering about why this was titled as it was and why that was not titled in a different way as intended criticism. This is a wonderful book and I think you need to read it. After you do, it will probably stick with you. From "Wild things"

out of the midnight forest
they follow you home like shadow
they live in your walls and rafters
in forgotten backs of cupboards
you know their shapes
but will not name them.