Can't you see in my handwriting, the curve of my G, the longing?

My poem "Ibis, Scribe" (Mythic Delirium #13) has been nominated for the 2006 Rhysling Award, Short Poem. I'm frankly surprised, because it's one of my oldest poems, and I like to think I'm always improving. (If you're very unlucky, I might post some of my earliest attempts one of these days. Can we say "reads too much Eliot," boys and girls?) That said, I'm not at all displeased. Finding out someone likes my work always and truly makes my day.

Taking a cue from time_shark, I cast my votes in the Locus Online Poetry Poll: the best science fiction / fantasy / horror poems of 2005 and all time. The choice is impossible and my tastes are idiosyncratic, but for all-time best I put down:

Phyllis Gotlieb, "ms & mr frankenstein" (1978)
Joe Haldeman, "January Fires" (2001)
Jane Yolen, "Beauty and the Beast: An Anniversary" (1989)
Mary B. Campbell, "A Case of Mistaken Identity" (1989)
Rika Lesser, "The Stonecutter at Norchia" (1983)

Only one of these poems is a Rhysling winner; two of them have never (so far as I know) been claimed by the speculative poetry community; but all impressed themselves powerfully on me when I first read them, and the same each time I re-read. And if nothing else, maybe I'll inspire someone else to read these poets. They're good stuff.

A chance sighting of the novelization of the upcoming film adaptation of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta (it's like the multiple variants of an oral tradition, only not) had "This Vicious Cabaret" on loop in my brain all yesterday. There's sex and death and human grime / In monochome for one thin dime / At least the trains all run on time / But they don't go anywhere . . . I'm still waiting to see whether V for Vendetta will be a film I want to see. I read the comic in the dealer's room at Boskone last year and loved it, and the film does contain Hugo Weaving and John Hurt. But while I consider The Matrix a near-brilliant film, I had only to see its first sequel to conclude that the Wachowski Brothers had seriously slipped. And Alan Moore has not been well-served by screen adaptations. (*cough*The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen*cough*) Still, I am currently considering going to see Nanny McPhee—a film that has received distinctly mixed reviews—solely because it contains Derek Jacobi. John Hurt must deserve the same courtesy . . .

And everyone has memories of the night that melted stone

Megan Whalen Turner's The King of Attolia is now available from amazon.com. I have been waiting for this book to come out ever since I glimpsed an ARC on the shelves of Pandemonium last year. If you haven't read the two previous novels, let me say only that The Thief is one of my favorite YA books, one of my favorite reconfigurations of classical myth and history, and its narrator actually gives Odysseus a run for his polytropy.

(And if you look at the author's website and scroll down to the Amazon.com Reader's review of The Queen of Attolia? Yeah. That's mine. The book came out in 2000. I imagine the review was written in the same year; I went through a lightning flirtation, courtship, and disillusion with amazon.com reviewing right around then. I hadn't even known the author had a website until a few years ago—there I was, happily reading through reviews of The Thief and The Queen of Attolia, and suddenly I thought, "Wait a minute. That one looks familiar . . .")

Alas, I cannot afford this new one at the moment: but my copy of Futureshocks did come in after a week's wait, so I'm off to write up lesson plans (in my endless quest to bring as many outside influences into this class as possible, I've decided there must be a way to connect modern and ancient concepts of nostalgia to Edward Arlington Robinson's "Miniver Cheevy") so that I can justify the time I'll take being horrified at the future.

Although, you know, I could just stick with being horrified at right now . . .