davidkm

Unwelcome Guests is the newest full-length collection of dark speculative poetry from SFPA Grand Master and Rhysling winner David C. Kopaska-Merkel

There’s relatability and strangehood in the offerings, some miniature in haiku, a beautiful symmetry and ominous obscurity in the text, dread in the unspoken.
Where some poets hero the impact of the closing line, Kopaska-Merkel’s poems strike in the power between the lines. The reader can never predict what potency the text might disgorge
Unwelcome Guests is a spectral lover’s touch—tender, yet dooming. It’s a perfect marriage of poetry and prose, warm and chilling, starkly intelligent and reachable.
Ideal for anyone.

--Eugen Bacon, Aurealis

At turns disquieting and quirky, playful and poignant, the poems in Unwelcome Guests, like their titular subjects, will stay with you long after you've put the book down and gone to bed (perhaps leaving the light on). A welcome addition to any genre poetry lover's collection!

--Marsheila Rockwell, Rhysling Award-winning poet and author of the Scribe Award-nominated Shard Axe series

The first half of Unwelcome Guests slithers in and out of side-alleys in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, while the second strides avenues of science fiction. Gotta love “June Lockhart’s Recurring Nightmare”. And when “Medusa Buys a Car”. There’s so many environs of speculative poetry visited here, penned with a convincing voice and deft whispers of experimentation.

--Robert Frazier, author of Phantom Navigation

David Kopaska-Merkel’s poetry is like a twisted vein of black gold, with subtle tweaks of darkling humor. He brings to the fore other images that are like watching a glistening pool of oil, beneath which something moves. Whether disturbing sites near Carcosa, the unsuspecting traps of relationships, or unusual visitations, his poetry will inspire, entertain and make you think.

--Colleen Anderson, Rhysling Award winner

MERELY THE BUCKET LIST POEM (ON PAGE 79) IS WORTH THE ACTION ON MY MIND AND MY FUNNY BONES (MORE THAN ONE)

--Edward Mycue, Author of I Am A Fact Not A Fiction

To order a signed and numbered copy from the publisher:

https://weirdhousepress.com/products/unwelcome-guests-by-david-c-kopaska-merkel?_pos=1&_psq=kop&_ss=e&_v=1.0

You can get one directly from me, too ($18 postpaid). I also have PDFs for $3. PayPal to jopnquog [at] gmail [dot] com.

https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/02/books-for-charity.html

Here is the deal. You send me a receipt, dated today or some day after today, showing that you contributed any amount of money to a non-profit that helps disadvantaged groups. This could be your local food pantry, Planned Parenthood, the Brigid Alliance, or any one of countless others. If you are not sure that I will approve of your donation, email me and ask.

When I receive the copy of the receipt from you I will email you a PDF of my 2019 dark speculative poetry collection The Ambassador Takes One For the Team, and my Elgin-winning 2022 collection, Some Disassembly Required. I have that one available in a variety of ebook formats. I'm sorry that I don't have ebooks of my 2024 dark speculative poetry collection from Weird House, entitled Unwelcome Guests

https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/01/dreams-and-nightmares-129.html

The latest issue of a magazine publishing speculative poetry since 1986. The makes it the second oldest such magazine afaik. Interested in submitting or purchasing? See below:

I print primarily poetry, but also publish a small amount of short short fiction. The genres of fantasy and SF are preferred. I am interested in experimental formats and content, and prefer fantastic horror a la Lovecraft or Blackwood to the blood and gore type. Any SF or fantasy is appropriate if it isn't sappy or trite. If your poem rhymes, be sure that the rhymes are not forced, and that the meter is consistent.
The magazine consists of 24 digest-sized pages with card-stock cover. Publication (dead trees and PDF) is thrice yearly, issues are numbered sequentially. Issue #1 was published in January of 1986. Print run 120 (plus about 25 PDF). Most-recent issue is #129. DN is distributed free to interested libraries. Maximum length for poetry or fiction is 2 single-spaced typed pages, but I prefer less than one page. I prefer e-submissions in the body of the message. Buying 1st N.Am. serial rights unless stated otherwise. Payment is $15 on acceptance + a contributor's copy. (You can request 3 extra copies instead of cash.) I prefer to pay using PayPal. DN is a tough market because of the high volume of poetry submissions I receive. Fewer than 5% of submissions are accepted. Response time ~ 2-4 weeks. Sample copy for $5 (print) or $1 (pdf). Print subscriptions are $25 for 6 issues inside North America and $30 U.S. outside North America. Lifetime sub., with available back issues, for $90. Pdf copies $1 each. A lifetime pdf subscription, with all back issues, is $39. Checks should be payable to me. Subscribe with PayPal to jopnquog@gmail.com.
Artwork should be line drawings; no half-tones (although any color will be visible on digital copies). Good photocopies OK, but I prefer to receive JPEG's as e-mail attachments. Art will be printed no larger than 4 1/2 by 7 1/2 inches, but I can reduce it. Payment $15+1 copy, but $30+1 copy for (color) covers. I always need covers, and small filler illustrations. Filler illos that are the right size and shape to fill up the bottom of a page are particularly useful.

https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/01/011525b.html

A few updates on writing and publishing. Latest Dreams & Nightmares is out!

Yesterday I wrote a blank-verse sonnet for my spouse's birthday, coming up in a few weeks. I didn't get it together for Christmakkah. After 46 years together, it's sometimes hard to know what else to say. Lately I've been writing senryu, especially scifaiku, sensu lato. Today I wrote a longer (~20 lines) free-verse SF poem, but I don't yet know if it's any good. I also wrote a couple of senryu. I find it's valuable to wait a day or three and reread what I've written. Sometimes what seems pretty good at first doesn't after a few days. This process continues for months or years in some cases, but I don't wait that long to submit poetry to publishers. Sometimes they come back and when I read them again I'm glad they were rejected.. Reading a poem aloud helps even more. This is especially good for identifying words that need to be changed.

A 10-fingr typist reduced to one. So, concision. That was the last of the vintage reviews, so you're stuck with what I come up with off the cuff. If you want short poems, especially senryu, go here https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/

Because I'm retired I don't feel a lot of pressure any day, but this week is especially quiet. We're making puzzles and eating rich food, thinking of family & friends who are far away. I spent part of yesterday choosing short poems to submit to Failed Haiku, when #106 opens Jan. 10.

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.

Schwader, Ann K., 2007, In the Yaddith Time, Mythos Books, cover and numerous interior illustrations by Steve Lines, introduction by Richard L. Tierney, perfect-bound paperback, 54 pages, ISBN 978-0-9789911-5-9, $10.

Schwader does, seemingly with little effort, what many have tried and failed to accomplish: produce Mythos poems that lie squarely within the genre, are original and entertaining, and make good poetry. Doesn't sound so hard, but I've read plenty of slush that says it's difficult indeed. I have learned to expect something really entertaining from Schwader's Mythos efforts, but this book is a tour de force. Each of the 36 poems stands on its own, yet together they tell a story, just as Lovecraft did with "Fungi from Yuggoth." I can't reproduce the story, but I can give you a taste of its components. It begins quickly.

From "The Finding"

Like slaughter lambs to marvel at that frame
of twisted yellow metal holding rough-
cut stones and latticework of alien make.
This was our first – & mankind's last – mistake.

And things go from bad to worse. From "A Fatal Flaw"

Madness grows
like any other malady: in genes
these most ingenious fools read like a book
of Holy Writ, & from that Scripture took
false comfort in deciding by such means:

Classic description from "Inside the Ghooric Zone" typifies her adherence to the strictures of Cthulhu Mythos form

Black viscous pools within whose fetid deeps
writhed Things our Captain knew – but would not name --
assailed our reeling senses. Sentient flame
eliminated temples, fanes, & keeps

Yet she seems to go beyond the fields many Mythos writers have known. The unwilling wanderers visit many extraterrestrial sites only hinted at by other chroniclers. Schwader describes more fully places of which we have heard before, so we visualize clearly that which was once hidden from us, yet she still imbues them with the mixture of malevolence, madness, and revulsion that Lovecraft first employed. From "Lost Celaeno"

Our instruments revealed no other lives
within this labyrinth, & yet it seemed
that shapes slipped past the corners of our eyes.

She refers to so many of the classic texts the book affords a special delight to those who are familiar with the Mythos. However, I think even if you have never read a word by Lovecraft, Long, Chambers, or Lumley, these poems will still engender a frisson of horror.

The voyage into darkness, death, and madness continues, flawlessly articulated and inexorable. Did I mention that they are all sonnets? The cover and other illustrations, somewhat reminiscent of the work of Denis Tiani, perfectly complement the text. If you like the Mythos or dark fantasy poetry in the broadest sense then you really must have this book.

Rathbone, Wendy, 2013, Unearthly: the collected poetry of Wendy Rathbone, Eye Scry Publications, 170 p., contact wrathbone@juno.com for information. E-book: $2.99 for the kindle from Amazon.com; $2.99 pdf from http://www.fanzinesplus.com/html/unearthly.htm.

Unearthly is an e-book, a reprint of seven out-of-print chapbooks published between 1994 and 2005. Only one poem in this collection is truly new, but unless you have been a dedicated collector of Wendy Rathbone's poetry, you can't have read all of these:

Moon Canoes, published by Dark Regions Press, 1994
(Im)mortal, published by Shadowfire Press, 1996
Scrying The River Styx, published by Anamnesis Press, 1999
Autumn Phantoms, published by Flesh and Blood Press, 2000
Dreams of Decadence Presents, published by DNA Publications 2002
Dancing in the Haunted Woodlands, published by Yellow Bat Review, 2003
Vampyria, published by Eye Scry Publications, 2005

Reading these poems is a sensory experience. They evoke a myriad colors, scents, even pure emotions. Rathbone's work is so rich you have to read a poem again and again to understand what it's about. When you do, you often find the poems are images, or series of images, pictures in words of eerie settings and situations. If these poems were abstract paintings I would hang them in my house. Rathbone's poetry carries the reader through dreamworlds that are intimate, beautiful, ghostly, and sharp-edged. Here there be monsters, though some are the kind to whom one is wont to surrender (whether this is wise is debatable).

From "Vampire Poet"

Fling me the snowflakes
from your eyes
I’ll save them in some
winter land
You’ll never know this is happening
how I watch your naked chest move

Some of Rathbone's monsters are more like old friends, and draw explicitly on tales we've long known.. From "Child’s Letter Found In An Old Toy Box (Written in silver crayon)"

I avoid Neverland’s mirrors, now,
too ancient to look upon, really,
just a ghastly old, old boy.
But don’t be sad, Wendy.

There are themes, common threads running through many of these poems. Seasons and months, especially autumn and winter. Immortality, vampires, creation and destruction. Especially vampires!

I never think of Rathbone as a science fiction writer. Her work is moody; it broods over impossible landscapes like the ghosts of Lovecraft's Elder Things, hovering over their cyclopean Antarctic city. Nevertheless, sfnal themes and settings can be found in her work.

From "Dreaming a Star-Farer to Life"

I watch for his breath
upon the frozen tongue of sky
that arcs my tiny seam of sight.
Within the tundra of galactic
continents, among the sparks
of constellations flickering

These poems take place in unreal worlds: outer space, undefined regions beyond reality, dreams. Sometimes one awakens from the dream. Some of these poems employ tropes from Celtic tales of the fae.

From "The Vampyre Cathedral"

One boy dreamed
of a goblin
who owns time.
He woke aged
and weeping.

There is simply no way to encapsulate Rathbone's oeuvre. And at less than $3 for the whole delightful collection, it's a crime to leave it on the table. So to speak.

Wiloch, Thomas, 2006, Screaming in Code, Naked Snake Press, 6 Rain Tree Lane, Pawleys Island, SC 29585, softcover, perfect bound, 56 pages. Artwork by Thomas Wiloch and Donna Taylor Burgess.

This is a very pretty chapbook: lots of illustrations, nice cover stock with lots of color; too bad it doesn't have an ISBN and the price is not listed in the book. However, there is a website: www.nakedsnakepress.com (the URL is not listed in the book either). Presumably, all is made clear at the website.

This is a book of prose poems that warns the reader against overdoses of its powerful medicine. There is always a risk when one indulges in hyperbole. The best of these stories are like western koans, but some are just not that profound.

Here are some snippets. I don't really want to quote more, because the individual prose poems, which total 34 in number, are generally shorter than half a page. "Tiny white skulls" can be our friends. "You can do anything you want with tiny white skulls." "Tell me I'm wrong": "the human body is composed primarily of empty space." "The locomotive museum" from which the locomotives escaped one day, "some rearing up like great wild horses... and still others as giddy as children."

On the one hand, some of the stuff was just silly, and not on purpose. In "the trunks" the protagonist opens a trunk in order to start packing for a trip, only to find a smaller trunk inside. He opens that trunk and, you can guess the rest. But here's my question. Why did he keep on opening trunks when they got so small he needed a microscope to see them? Why not just pack all of the smaller trunks inside the next larger one, and take the biggest, now empty, on the trip? Sure, there's a mystery to be solved, but you're going to skip a trip to Europe because of it?!

On the other hand, I like the idea of the man who lives in a box. It turns out he lives in a box so large that the entire universe fits inside. If the box is this big does it matter? I think it does.

On the gripping hand, this might be a good book to have on the bedside table for those mornings when you wake up two hours early and can't go back to sleep. You might learn something useful reading a couple of these.

Watts, JS, 2012, Songs of Steelyard Sue, Lapwing Publications, lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com
http://www.freewebs.com/lapwingpoetry/, ISBN 978-1-909252-02-8, 24 p. This is a print publication, but I reviewed a PDF file. £10.00 plus shipping, or $22 from Amazon.

Songs of Steelyard Sue is a small book of 12 poems about Steelyard Sue, a metal inheritor of our world. Two of the poems were previously published elsewhere. I gotta tell ya, as I was reading this book I kept silently saying to myself, “that couldn't happen,” or “that violates the laws of physics” and so on. I fully intended to not write a review. But somehow I couldn't do that. I couldn't dislike these poems. J. S. Watts didn't write a science fiction book, in which robots are supposed to do only those things robots plausibly could do. Even though it is about a robot. This is, at its most scientific, perhaps a science fantasy book. Of course it is really about a lonely woman, the last person on earth, if a robot who admits that she has no heart and no human soul is a person. Whatever she isn't, she is, at least, a gardener, even in the absence of plant life.

_I bent the wire
in pretty shapes
and made flower faces
from black rubber scraps.
I saw a bird there, once,
perching on a sonic shell._

(From “Steelyard Sue Plants a Garden”)

Sue is alone, the Earth is nearly a lifeless place, but she isn't completely alone. Metaphorically speaking, there are a few knocks on the door:

_It sat there for two days,
stone-like, good as dead,
until, on the third day,
I found the stone moved,
the toad gone,_

(from “Toad”)

And isn't that a hell of a thing? Did Jesus come back in the form of a toad? And Steelyard Sue, a seeker, but not human and not having a soul, didn't recognize him? Or is this allusion really just a cheap joke? I suspect the latter. The thing is, I like Sue. I like her voice. She doesn't know much about our world, but she's trying. She doesn't know how things are supposed to work, but she has a very strong sense of right and wrong, and wants to do right. The writing is lyrical and the story is a real human one, about an amateur self-taught archaeologist marooned all alone on a desert island 26,000 miles in circumference.

_Sometimes I go to church
three or four times a day. There are so many abandoned here,
churches, that is,_

[and]

_I once found a place,
multi-layered, open to the sky,
where rows and rows of cars
waited their turn in silence_

(From “Steelyard Sue Goes to Church”)

Sue doesn't really know what a church was, and she can't tell a church from a parking garage, but she knows they were important to us in a non-tangible way. She tries to experience them the way we did. She is doomed to failure, and she knows that, but she isn't anything by herself. She exists in relationship to our vanished species.

_A woman of many parts, all man-made
and without a human soul,
not even the soft-skin touch of polished chrome.
I make no concession to organic,
the full moon has no pull upon me.
All I am is corners, sharps and rust:_

(From “The Last Lament of Steelyard Sue”)

Sue is a post-human commentator, solitary, strangely knowledgeable about some of our affairs, yet profoundly ignorant of others. She isn't independent of us. She was not made by us, but she was assembled out of what we left behind. The funny thing about Sue, is that she is also a sort of bridge. A bridge between the human world and a robot world about which she knew nothing, because it came to be when she was already gone. Exactly how this happened is not explained either, but it does provide an explanation for the book. The poems are what the robot world knows about Sue. We don't learn much about the robot world, but we do get the sense that there is a real society, developed at some future time with no direct reference to us. Instead, the robots refer back to a legendary past in which Sue was the only inhabitant.

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.

Bus Stop, John Francis Haynes and The Long Trip, Dainis Bisenieks, 2006, Hilltop Press, ISBN 0 905262 38 7, distributed by www.bbr-online.com/catalogue. $4/£1.75. Not paginated, but 16 pages total. Saddle stitched with a color photocopy cover on front and back. Both covers are by Gunter Wessalowski. This slim volume has the appearance of a typical small-press chapbook, except it is laid out like an Ace double; one poem is right side up beginning in the front of the book, whereas the other poem is upside down and progresses from the back. Or the other way around.

Of course the whimsy in this book is European (British and German) and Pennsylvanian (which is east for me). I like the covers. The reproduction could be better, but it's quite acceptable. Let's look at "The Long Trip" first. Stark geometric objects, organic forms, and bleak emptiness on the cover go well with this poem about an interstellar voyage. The poem only hints at the outcome of the voyage and says nothing about the long trip's purpose. The purpose of the poem, if I may presume to claim that I understand the author's intent, is to show us the dark side of voyaging. If you don't know where you're going, or why, and you don't know where you are when you stop on the way, and you don't know what you are looking at when you make that stop, what does that say about the trip, you, and the universe? For Bisenieks, the universe is just this sort of unwelcoming and unfathomable place. In a few pages, he takes us there.

_The rainstorm ends, and the clouds draw away.
The captain gives orders: continue the trip.
Back into a world of neither night nor day
We follow our shadows into the ship._

Turn the book over. "Bus Stop" has a lush cover full of organic forms: plants, animals, and things that could be one or the other. There is a moon, which might be living, a spaceship, and a plethora of odd alien life forms. Open the book and you step into a dream. It doesn't seem to have a direct relationship to the cover, but by the time you get to the end I think you'll see the connection. The protagonist in the poem (I hesitate to call him that because he doesn't make any progress) is trapped in what he believes to be a malignant dream. Alien landscapes and creatures are a dime a dozen in this dream, if dream it is. It reminds me a little of a dream I once had. The dreamer in this poem tries to escape back to reality, but he cannot. There is no explicit resolution, but the reader is left with some questions. Was it really a dream? Could it be reality? And if it's a dream, why? Drugs, the influence of mind-altering machines, bad luck? We don't know any of these things, but we do get a glimpse into mystery.

_The howling wind screamed around his ears.
Through chattering teeth and half-shut eyes he peered
At walls of ice and two pale, limpid suns.
It really must be time to wake up now_

Certainly these two poems go together like left foot and right. They could be pages torn from books in a library of SFnal dementia. Steve Sneyd, science fiction poetry's historian and publisher of Hilltop Press, knows how to pick them.

Tentchoff, Marcie Lynn, 2007, Sometimes While Dreaming: Cedar Rapids, IA, Sam's Dot Publishing, 83 p.

Sometimes While Dreaming is a chapbook of poetry written by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff. Thirty-seven of the 48 poems in this collection are new. Eight ethereal illustrations by Marge B. Simon accompany them. At her best, Tentchoff is able to put the reader in touch with the souls of some pretty strange people and other beings. There is plenty of her best in this chapbook.

One of my favorites is "Fallen," in which a case of mistaken identity has more than casual significance.

Some other girl found him there,
And drew him down to her,
Gently freeing each limb from the thorns.
It wasn't me.

What I like best about this poem is that I was led to empathize with the protagonist (someone I could be, aside from the gender difference), but put in a situation I could never be in, and, while reading the poem, I felt that I was there.

I also enjoyed "Crow counting," with its mounting sense of impending doom for the naïve narrator.

The road grew long, I asked his name,
but he would only smile at me,
and stroke my cheek with feathers gleaned
from one of our last seven birds.

This poem has roots in the old ballads of betrayal and death that were so popular with folksingers of the 1960s and earlier.

From "Displaced":

Sometimes she remembers
coming from some other place
where song and dance
were food and drink

This poem is a short poignant view into the heart of someone lost who is forgetting that she is lost. Subtle stories, sketched in allusion, hints, and sly clues, these are Tentchoff''s hallmarks. One is sometimes left knowing the feel of what has happened, or why, when the specifics are uncertain.

"Other hungers" is another take on the Persephone myth, supposing, as others have done, that she's content or happy underground.

Do you miss the dim,
bone-filled freedoms
of the underworld

And what if she does? Would anything change? Tentchoff asks a lot of questions here and she hints at the answers, we are not sure perhaps if we interpret those hints correctly.

In other poems we explore the lives of werewolves, Cinderella, dryads, and others. In "Rootbound" (Clever title, by the way) a dryad shows us what her life is really like:

Away from this, the prison of my bark,
My anguish flows and rages through my sap,
And burns the brightest sun to bitter dark,
That they stride free while I rot in this trap.

Tentchoff reminds us that we are all prisoners, and I don't think she says this anywhere in Sometimes while dreaming, but it's implicit. Some prisons we cannot escape, but for many of us the bars are inside our heads.

When Tentchoff is dreaming, strange and wonderful things result. Myths are retold in enchanting and unexpected ways and new myths are created with their own history stretching out from them into the imagined past. Sometimes while dreaming contains many more poems I am tempted to excerpt for you, but come on. Just buy the book. I'm very sure you won't regret it.

Sneyd, Steve, 2008, Mistaking the Nature of the Posthuman, perfect-bound trade pb, Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, HD5 8PB, England, ISBN 978-0-905262-42-0, 107 p, ￡6.99/$14.

Historian of SF poetry, chronicler of global SF poetry news, prolific English SF poet whose work is well-known everywhere among genre poetry readers. That is Steve Sneyd, and any new collection from him is eagerly anticipated. Here it is, with an intriguing and disturbing cover by Gunter Wessalowski. If I counted right, there are 96 poems in this book. According to the introduction, these poems were all first published in the 21st century, not many years on, yet the book reads like a best-of high-graded compilation. There is not a dud in the lot.

The introduction, written by the author, appears to claim that the book is published as a guide to surviving the future. Works for me. Although if you use this book as a guide to survival it might just convince you to give up right now. But don't do that! At least read the book first.

The first poem is "If the doors of perception were cleansed." Here's an excerpt.

... just like today only nicer and
futuristic how it ought to be the
best of home only better smoother
cosier somehow if we didn't have
to get back jobs to go to and
Elaine's mum and the kids and anyway

Well, you get the idea. Sneyd doesn't believe in punctuation and has heard rumors of pronouns and prepositions, but does not believe they have been sighted in the wild. Somehow it's all quite understandable (albeit occasionally with a little work).

From "We are also keys to the experiment"

snakes bred russet-red for survival camouflage
in case just in case with monster multifiltered
lungs to breathe
in hindsight the russet we suspect aesthetic
and fangs megafangs manipulated into drills
to search subsurface water out that too late we learn
In this low gravity will also grow

In Sneyd's future nothing ever works like we expect or plan. And when does it ever? Maybe these cautionary tales are spot on accurate. Let me just give you a further taste of the content of this remarkable book. Open it to any page.

From "As is written in the emergency manual,"

Airless Extraterrestrial Enterprises tests our faith
will at very last possible instant as we hallucinate
flake into non-sentience save us reward such loyalty

From "Included out,"

sure beyond doubt more than half at least
the others at these dos are same as me are
not the humans they appear to be at all and
all the towers of the world I am so sure
full night on night of humans hiding from
each other...

What if, all unknowing, you take one of these androids home? Androids who can't be sure of each others' humanity. At least, with clothes on.

From "The sanctity of his mission,"

and
before
sending the virgin to her doom
who otherwise would have anyhow within
a cycle gone into ground

a crop-source-placator she
at least now will not have to
burrow down alone: a hybrid in
her belly, a tasty

extra bonus for the god or gods.

One gets the impression that what is being said is so very important the words tumble over one another in a hopeless attempt to get out before it's too late. I guess if this is a handbook of the "break glass in emergency" kind that might be true. After all, aren't we waist deep in the future already? If this book is instead a metaphor about how hopelessly stranger and more desolate we ourselves will become than most of us can imagine, nevermind what our tools or aliens will be like, then there's no hurry. Cherish your illusions. Don't read this book. Trust me, you don't want to knw what can happen to us, out there, or even right here at home. What you do want to know is, if you buy only one SF poetry book this month, or this season, Mistaking the Nature of the Posthuman should be it.

I know I'm giving what some will misconstrue as contradictory advice, but I maintain that's the best way to deal with the future. In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit I was the first publisher of one or two poems in this collection.

Schweitzer, Darrell, 2008, Ghosts of past and future: selected poetry, The Borgo Press, an imprint of Wildside Press, www.wildsidepress.com, perfect bound. Cover by Thierry Vivies. 125 p, ISBN 978-1-4344-8204-4.

Poems in this book were first published between the years 1992 and 2008. A quick glance through the five pages of acknowledgments indicates that at least two of these poems are first published here. The original appearances of the remainder cover a lot of territory, ranging from Weird Tales to Asimov's, and many lesser-known venues. The book ends with explanatory notes about some of the poems. In the interests of full disclosure I should mention that I first published a few of these in Dreams and Nightmares.

I love the way the book is organized into thematic sections. By far the longest is called "Intimations beyond mortality." This is followed by "The matter of Britain," "Post-Homerica," and "Yesterday's tomorrows." All of these sound intriguing, don't they? They do if you are at all familiar with Darrell's work.

These are powerful poems. In each we find the personal immediacy of the best mainstream poetry, but in the context of our boundary-pushing literature. And who doesn't prefer a gripping and thought-provoking poem about death, and what comes after, to a similar poem about cracks in the sidewalk or spring flowers?

"We outnumber the living, you know.
For all you desperately try to outbreed us,
the fruits of your loins inevitably
switch sides in the end."

That is the beginning of "We dead outnumber the living, you know." Nothing we haven't heard before, but the poem takes off from there like a fighter jet from an aircraft carrier. By the time you get to the end, the aircraft carrier is at the bottom of the sea, if you will allow such a ridiculous metaphor.

From "Song of a forgotten god"

"With Moon-pale hair and beard grown dark,
I rage and run with the beasts,
the perilous father of all that I meet,
dancing, dancing against the Sun."

Many of these poems are imbued with the qualities of legend, even those that are not explicitly about the stuff of legend, as this one is.

From "Is their survivor's guilt in heaven?":

"a parent, with just one bad habit,
a little careless at the end,
now screaming in flames forever
while we, the lucky ones,
are supposed to sit back, strum our harps,
and enjoy ourselves?"

Do you suppose the entrance requirements are really as strict as we have been told?

I want to particularly mention the section about Britain, which is really about King Arthur. Schweitzer has been worrying at the question of Arthur like a dog with a very large bone. He has attacked the question of just what is the Arthurian legend all about from several different directions, and for all I know he's not done with it yet. Arthur has inspired a lot of writers and there is plenty to share. Still, there is insight here, worth reading even if you have read tons of what has been written before.

Moving past Arthur, perhaps our most famous legendary hero, Schweitzer is hard on heroes in general. This includes space opera heroes as well as legendary ones. It even includes those who make heroes. From "Near the end of the epic":

"the villainous bards,
who turned this enterprise into an epic,
left that part out, not deigning to mention
the thousands of lives washed away like ashes"

Schweitzer is good at seeing beyond the surfaces of the old stories. He turns them over and shows us the underbellies, moldy and raddled by bugs, that we should have known were there. But we didn't know, because we didn't think about it. Now it will be hard to forget.

You know, I really can't do justice to this book by quoting a few lines from this poem and a few lines from that poem. And it doesn't help to make the review longer. They are all so good I want to give them all to you. But that wouldn't be fair to the poet or the publisher. So, for the moment you have to make do with a few snippets. I suggest you visit Wildside on the web and limber up your PayPal account. You won't regret it.

Why hasn't Schweitzer ever won a Rhysling award? I could answer this question, but most likely all of my answers would be wrong, or at best half-truths. But he must get a winner someday. Quick! Buy this book and read it, so you can say you knew his work way back when.

David C. Kopaska-Merkel
1300 Kicker Rd
Tuscaloosa, AL 35404
205-246-9346
jopnquog@Gmail.com

Book review

Schimel, Lawrence, 2007, Fairy Tales for Writers: a Midsummer Night's Press, New York, ISBN-13 978-0-9794208-0-1, $6.50 (US), a small perfect bound book with glossy card-stock two-color cover, 30 pages.

13 poems, 12 original. The theme of this book is, perhaps, obvious from the title. These poems all relate in some way to well-known fairy tales and to the writing life.

This is the first book published by Schimel's new press and it looks nice. It's very small; it might get lost on a bookshelf, even one full of chapbooks. I didn't measure it, but it looks like it's about 5 ½ inches tall by 4 inches wide or thereabouts. Also, it isn't for everybody. I think it will really only appeal to writers and perhaps also to fans of modern treatments of fairy tales. Still, the poems are excellent. Schimel is a very good writer and he knows what people are about, whether or not they are writers. His points about humanity are reinforced by his choices of fairy tales. I don't generally like to read about writing or writers; it seems too intellectually incestuous, but this book is different. The poems are music, and I have to recommend "Fairy Tales for Writers."

Here are a couple of examples. It's hard to know which to choose. How about "The Little Mermaid"?

She gave up her voice for him,
learning to mimic the minimalist style
he advocated in his workshops.

Or maybe "Cinderella"

He couldn't find her anywhere.
He asked everyone, tried to track her down:
Who was her agent?
Where had she published?

"The Ugly Duckling"

the uncertainty, the constantly having to tell
the kid to get his nose out of a book and go out
and play like normal children should.

By turns chilling, melancholy, and even uplifting, these poems pack a punch. Don't miss out.

Clark, G. O., 2011, Shroud of Night, Dark Regions Press, 60 p., www.darkregions.com, perfectbound pb, ISBN 978-1-937128-02-9, $7.95.

G. O. Clark has been a fixture in the fantastic poetry community since before I joined it. His work has been published in many places, including Asimov's Science Fiction and Strange Horizons. This is his 10th book. We have never met, but I have read and enjoyed his work for decades. Shroud of Night, his latest collection, comprises a diverse assemblage of his darkest poetry. Most of these 39 poems are very short, driving their nails in with just a few lines. Few are longer than a page, but they don't need to be. Original images are hard to come by in horror poetry, but Clark delivers, again and again.

From "Cemetery Angel"

She's just trying to
get the kinks out, a little
break time stretching, stiff from
having to hold a solemn pose
all night and day.

Some of these poems can be reminiscent of the old Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil." Others have a sharper edge. Still other poems are serious and silly at the same time.

From "A Few Words About The Angels"

They can adapt to every atmosphere,
be it air, water, or the vacuous lack thereof,
the speed of light a minor inconvenience.

From "Curses and Salutations"

May your gravestone be made of cardboard,
your casket balsa wood, and your obituary
written by a dyslexic drunk.

It's not easy to encompass in a brief review the breadth of style and tone displayed in this book. I hope these three excerpts give you something of the flavor of the whole that they represent.

Who would've thought a poem about screams could send chills up my spine? Did you know that Hell hath a sailboat? Pray you are never conscripted for the crew! You'll meet some peculiar monsters in this book. Zombies, sure, but garden gnomes? What is their horrifying secret? There is humor here, but who said humor and horror don't go together? I think they do, and if you read this book, I believe you'll see I am right. Shroud of Night brings a lot of darkness together in a handy package. You should read it.

Sneyd, Steve, 2005, Ahasuerus on Mars, Atlantean publishing, 38 Pierrot Steps, 71 Kursaal Way, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS1 2UY, United Kingdom, checks to DJ Tyrer, £1, saddlestitched with cover of lightweight cover stock. Not paginated. Illustrated by Alan Hunter.

This book contains one 8-page poem. Ahasuerus is of course the wandering Jew, and in this poem he wanders pretty dang far. To his sorrow he discovers that no matter how far you go it is pretty difficult to escape your own thoughts and memories. Steve departs a little in this poem from his usual highly compressed style, although you can't read a stanza without knowing who wrote it.

The poem begins with Ahasuerus telling in the first person how he relates to his short-lived crewmates, then that he did not expect the curse would allow him to leave Earth. He speculates about the reasons, and also tells facts about his life, as if to a curious questioner. We learn that he can father children, cannot be killed (although he can suffer pain from physical injury or illness), has little in common with vampires, and so on. He goes on at great length about his millennia of suffering. This is followed by a long section in which the Wandering Jew reminds the reader of why he received his curse in the first place. Finally, the trip down memory lane ends, and the story comes back to its present on Mars.

As a story the poem is not entirely successful. I did learn or remember a number of things about the biblical story. We can all picture what life must be like for the reluctant immortal, though Steve fleshes it out more than we might have in our imagination. Mars seems like a contrived vehicle for telling the protagonist's story. He could be anywhere, and that is the problem I have with the plot. It is not a true science-fiction story because the science-fiction elements are grafted on like Frankenstein's monster's head.

As a poem this comes closer to the mark. Here are a couple of examples.

First he whines...

though in fact I have tried madness
too and that is also too self-heal
to help at all or any drug
or anything to change to shut
the tick of brainpan down

then he tries to justify himself...

did him a favour really made sure
he didn't let himself down
weakness shown before his following his fans
the silent majority of the town

artfully damning himself more with every phrase. This is where Steve almost always excels and he certainly does it here. The reading is both a challenge and a delight.

The layout in this book leaves something to be desired. The right hand pages, those that would have odd numbers if they had numbers, have no left margin at all. The words almost run right out of sight. When it was realized it was going to look like this, the publisher really should have reformatted the manuscript. However, everything is actually visible and can be read.

To summarize, the book could look better and to the plot could be more believable, but the writing is superb.

Cox, Cardinal, 2014, From Space, Starburker Publications, c/o 58 Pennington, Orton Goldhay, Peterborough PE2 5RB United Kingdom, unpaginated saddle stitched chapbook. Available from the publisher for a C5 self-addressed envelope, or email cardinalcox1@yahoo.co.uk. This collection states that it was inspired by the exhibition "Space Fact and Fiction" held at Peterborough Museum June to October 2013, and by the National Space Centre in Lericester.

This chapbook has the same format as the numerous Cthulhu Mythos themed booklets that Cardinal Cox has written recently. In contrast to those books, most of the poems here owe their genesis to golden age science-fiction books and movies, with some real life space science and politics thrown in. The usual bottom-of-the-page notes explain where some poems came from, and dedicate others to notable SF fans. The poems vary from rhymed and metered to other forms and even free verse. This works, I think, as the chapbook's space theme ties them together.

I particularly like the (to me) new insight of “Orbital Observatory”

And as we look into the past
Because the Universe has grown
Those distant vistas are smaller
Than the space we inhabit

If we could look far enough, would we see a tiny post-Bang blaze? Another science poem, “Space Suit,” also appeals to me. An excerpt:

We can't imagine what drove
The fish first onto land
Had a pool dried?
Did it chase an arthropod?

These by no means represent the range of this pamphlet, but do, I hope, indicate its quality. Get it before it's too late!

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