sovay: (Lord Peter Wimsey)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2014-01-04 10:31 pm

In this story, she is fire-born

In which genre is a false dichotomy.

These are three poems published this month in Poetry Magazine, "the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world." They are all glosses on Game of Thrones (from the absence of the indefinite article, I assume the television series, not the novel or A Song of Ice and Fire) by Leah Umansky, whose biography includes a forthcoming chapbook of poems inspired by Mad Men:

"I Want to be Stark[like]"
"Khaleesi Says"
"Follow"

(The same issue contains Idra Novey's "On Returning to My Hometown in 2035," which is about as science-fictional a title as you can get without including robots. Adam Fitzgerald's "Time After Time" is a fascinating long-form mondegreen of the Cyndi Lauper song.)

At this point I believe the lines between speculative poetry and mainstream, not to mention between fanwork and original work, are fairly sharply collapsed, so can we stop arguing about definitions already? Perhaps I should feel heartened that I haven't been rejected all these years for sticking gods and ghosts where normal confessional postmodernism belongs, but instead I seem to experience a kind of mingled encouragement and annoyance: this is good, but more. Like the week The New Yorker published Robert Pinsky's "Last Robot Song" and Susan Stewart's "First Idyll." Congratulations, New Yorker! You are not deaf to either the mythical past or the mechanical future! Now publish some of the really excellent poets I know!

(I dunno, anybody want to slushbomb a leading poetry journal? Their response times are much better than Tor.com's.)
skygiants: Princess Tutu, facing darkness with a green light in the distance (teach me to hear mermaids)

[personal profile] skygiants 2014-01-05 04:47 am (UTC)(link)
Man, I've always been confused a bit about how speculative poetry was supposed to be different from mainstream poetry anyway. Like, isn't all poetry . . . supposed to be weird and numinous and full of wild images and not full of mundane literalism . . .?
yhlee: (AtS no angel (credit: <user name="helloi)

[personal profile] yhlee 2014-01-05 04:59 am (UTC)(link)
(I dunno, anybody want to slushbomb a leading poetry journal? Their response times are much better than Tor.com's.)
Don't tempt me!

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2014-01-05 04:04 am (UTC)(link)
I feel this way about the New Yorker and sci-fi/fantasy prose. I don't have a subscription, so I don't read regularly, but I keep hearing about this or that spec-fic story that it's published.

Flash back
to seagull-beguiled eyes.
--I liked that from the "Time after Time mondegreen, but thought of you when it got to A Turing machine?
Scotch-taping through windows, stolen from deep inside
rum-beaded thyme.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)

[personal profile] larryhammer 2014-01-05 09:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm for slushbombing.

---L.

[identity profile] snowy-owlet.livejournal.com 2014-01-06 01:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Most of my poems go to Poetry before I submit them anywhere else.

I figure why the hell not.
selidor: (Default)

[personal profile] selidor 2014-01-07 04:41 am (UTC)(link)
Confessional postmodernism often seems like it hasn't been thinking deeply enough.

(totally up for a slushbombfest: pick a target).
Though in general market awesomeness news, did you see Apex poetry is now helmed by [personal profile] elisem and is taking open submissions?