Lurid but exciting covers like this attracted generation of young science fiction fans. Poetry helped elevate speculative literature of all types reach wider and more adult audiences. |
Science Fiction and Fantasy, the genres frequently lumped together as speculative fiction that attempt to either seriously examine the moral, ethical, and philosophic issues
of this world by imagining others or simply the surrender to our inner ten year old, have long been popular niche reading. But they
have grown from the province of nerds with taped glasses with their stashes of lurid pulp magazines and dreamy
little girls with unicorn and dragon fetishes, to a cultural power house that sometimes
seem ready to crush and consume everything else like a Japanese reactor by a tsunami. The mega-million
selling series of fat books, the
comic books, the block-buster high-tech movie epics, the odd and
dark TV series, the fan conventions that fill giant exposition halls. You know the inescapable drill.
But
there has also been, maybe a tad quieter,
a complimentary growth of SF poetry. It even has its own organization, the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA) founded by Suzette Haden Elgin in 1978 and major award, the SFPA’s Rhysling Award.
The
origins of modern speculative poetry are as hard to pin
down as a hopping flea. There are
examples with characteristics dating back centuries, not to mention ancient myth, epic poetry, and folk
ballads. On the fantasy side of the
tradition, revived interest in those old forms, including fairy tales by Victorian
romantics stimulated writers to weave their own tales and poems set in the
worlds of those old tales or inspired by similar wonder and magic.
An illustration from the original edition of Goblin Market by the poet's famous brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. |
The
English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
is sometimes credited with the first modern fantasy poem for her narrative poem Goblin Market, fraught with sexual tension, in 1859. It
was published as the title poem of a collection 3 years later with
illustrations by her brother, the Pre-Raphaelite
artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Below
are the first two and final stanzas of that long poem.
Goblin Market (Excerpts)
Morning and
evening
Maids heard the
goblins cry:
“Come buy our
orchard fruits,
Come buy, come
buy:
Apples and
quinces,
Lemons and
oranges,
Plump unpeck’d
cherries,
Melons and
raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheek’d
peaches,
Swart-headed
mulberries,
Wild free-born
cranberries,
Crab-apples,
dewberries,
Pine-apples,
blackberries,
Apricots,
strawberries;—
All ripe
together
In summer
weather,—
Morns that pass
by,
Fair eves that
fly;
Come buy, come
buy:
Our grapes fresh
from the vine,
Pomegranates
full and fine,
Dates and sharp
bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and
bilberries,
Taste them and
try:
Currants and
gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like
barberries,
Figs to fill
your mouth,
Citrons from the
South,
Sweet to tongue
and sound to eye;
Come buy, come
buy.”
Evening by evening
Among the
brookside rushes,
Laura bow’d her
head to hear,
Lizzie veil’d
her blushes:
Crouching close
together
In the cooling
weather,
With clasping
arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling
cheeks and finger tips.
“Lie close,”
Laura said,
Pricking up her
golden head:
“We must not
look at goblin men,
We must not buy
their fruits:
Who knows upon
what soil they fed
Their hungry
thirsty roots?”
“Come buy,” call
the goblins
Hobbling down
the glen.
…
Days, weeks, months, years
Afterwards, when
both were wives
With children of
their own;
Their
mother-hearts beset with fears,
Their lives
bound up in tender lives;
Laura would call
the little ones
And tell them of
her early prime,
Those pleasant
days long gone
Of not-returning
time:
Would talk about
the haunted glen,
The wicked,
quaint fruit-merchant men,
Their fruits
like honey to the throat
But poison in
the blood;
(Men sell not
such in any town):
Would tell them
how her sister stood
In deadly peril
to do her good,
And win the
fiery antidote:
Then joining hands
to little hands
Would bid them
cling together,
“For there is no
friend like a sister
In calm or
stormy weather;
To cheer one on
the tedious way,
To fetch one if
one goes astray,
To lift one if
one totters down,
To strengthen
whilst one stands.”
—Christina Rossetti
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. |
On the science
fiction side, in which new possibilities are opened in this world by science and new worlds are envisioned
in the future rather than the time misted past, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and
Edgar Allen Poe’s (1809-1849) short story Murders in the Rue Morgue and his famous Balloon Hoax were among the first fiction pieces linked to modern Sci-Fi although both were linked to the
sometimes overlapping horror genre and
Murders is often cited as the first detective story as well. But the Frenchman
Jules Vern, who was particularly inspired by Poe, generally gets the credit
as the founder of science fiction.
At first, by its
very nature, which often swung from gee-whiz
science and technological innovation
to testosterone heavy heroics in the
early day, did not lend itself much to quality poetry. Early verse pickings are slim, almost
hints. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 - 1930), most famous in science
fiction for his Lost World, penned some short verse that occasionally bumped up
against ideas central to speculative fiction.
In this one he represents essential skepticism
and the limits of our abilities to understand things beyond our experience,
both eternal SF themes.
A Parable
The cheese-mites
asked how the cheese got there,
And warmly
debated the matter;
The Orthodox
said that it came from the air,
And the Heretics
said from the platter.
They argued it
long and they argued it strong,
And I hear they
are arguing now;
But of all the
choice spirits who lived in the cheese,
Not one of them
thought of a cow.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Still,
on the whole, fantasy has lent itself more easily to poetry. The most influential of all fantasy writers, J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1972), the
English antiquarian scholar, translator, and artist whose epics of Middle Earth made grown up fairy tales
for adults. He laced his books with
verse, sometime in the guise of songs or lore from the many creatures that
inhabited his strange lands. Some have
become little classics on their own like this one from chapter 10 of Lord
of the Rings.
All That is Gold
All that is gold
does not glitter,
Not all those
who wander are lost;
The old that is
strong does not wither,
Deep roots are
not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a
fire shall be woken,
A light from the
shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be
blade that was broken,
The crownless
again shall be king.
—J. R. R. Tolkien
Eventually
science fiction, which was fostered in pulp
magazines with lurid covers in
the ‘20’s and’30’s, began to go deeper, ask more probing questions, especially
in the aftermath of World War II and
the dawn of the Atomic age raised questions
about the inevitable progress of science. Soon hard
science writers like Isaak Asimov and
Ray Bradbury were making serious
alternative fiction. Bradbury was also a
poet. This poem was written by Bradbury
(1920-2012) to be recited on a program with Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan
and others at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs
in Pasadena to commemorate the Mariner 9 mission to Mars.
If Only We Had
Taller Been
The fence we walked between the years
Did bounce us serene.
It was a place half in the sky where
In the green of leaf and promising of peach
We'd reach our hands to touch and almost touch the sky,
If we could reach and touch, we said,
‘Twould teach us, not to, never to, be dead.
Did bounce us serene.
It was a place half in the sky where
In the green of leaf and promising of peach
We'd reach our hands to touch and almost touch the sky,
If we could reach and touch, we said,
‘Twould teach us, not to, never to, be dead.
We ached and almost touched that stuff;
Our reach was never quite enough.
If only we had taller been,
And touched God’s cuff, His hem,
We would not have to go with them
Who've gone before,
Who, short as us, stood tall as they could stand
And hoped by stretching, tall, that they might keep their land,
Their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul.
But they, like us, were standing in a hole.
Our reach was never quite enough.
If only we had taller been,
And touched God’s cuff, His hem,
We would not have to go with them
Who've gone before,
Who, short as us, stood tall as they could stand
And hoped by stretching, tall, that they might keep their land,
Their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul.
But they, like us, were standing in a hole.
O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall
Across the Void, across the Universe and all?
And, measured out with rocket fire,
At last put Adam's finger forth
As on the Sistine Ceiling,
And God's hand come down the other way
To measure man and find him Good,
And Gift him with Forever’s Day?
I work for that.
Across the Void, across the Universe and all?
And, measured out with rocket fire,
At last put Adam's finger forth
As on the Sistine Ceiling,
And God's hand come down the other way
To measure man and find him Good,
And Gift him with Forever’s Day?
I work for that.
Short man, Large dream, I send my rockets forth
between my ears,
Hoping an inch of Good is worth a pound of years.
Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal Mall:
We’ve reached Alpha Centauri!
We’re tall, O God, we’re tall!
between my ears,
Hoping an inch of Good is worth a pound of years.
Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal Mall:
We’ve reached Alpha Centauri!
We’re tall, O God, we’re tall!
—Ray
Bradbury
Perhaps
a woman who wrote some of the most enduring classics of both science fiction—The
Left and of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and Lathe of Heaven—and fantasy—The
Earthsea
series—would be a natural at translating the spirit of those works into
verse. Ursula K. Le Guin, born in 1929 two days after the great Stock Market Crash and still active and
vital today, is one of my favorite contemporary American writers in any and all
genres.
The Maenads
Somewhere I read
that when they finally staggered off the mountain
into some strange town, past drunk,
hoarse, half naked, blear-eyed,
blood dried under broken nails
and across young thighs,
but still jeering and joking, still trying
to dance, lurching and yelling, but falling
dead asleep by the market stalls,
sprawled helpless, flat out, then
middle-aged women,
respectable housewives,
would come and stand nightlong in the agora
silent
together
as ewes and cows in the night fields,
guarding, watching them
as their mothers
watched over them.
And no man
dared
that fierce decorum.
—Ursula K.
Le Guin
Margaret Atwood. |
In
recent years Millennials and their younger sibling, having grown up in a
deeply world that seems wildly out of their possible control and from which
they are deeply alienated, have
become fascinated with dystopian and
apocalyptic literature. Not that dystopianism is new—indeed it seems historically
for ever Utopia is a black world
gone horribly wrong. But once speculative
literature, especially science fiction, was largely optimistic. Mirroring the words that once inspired 19th Century Unitarians and early 20th Century Humanists alike, Sci-Fi
writers tended to expect a world transformed by technology and “the progress of mankind onward and
upward forever.” Bitter experience has
just about crushed that dream, thus the radical turn to dystopianism and it
appeal to the young in things like Suzzane
Collins’s Hunger Games series and its many clones. Margaret Atwood, born in 1939, whose The
Handmaid’s Tale may have made her the spiritual godmother to current
young writers, still catches the mood and spirit of this literature.
Siren Song
This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:
the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see beached skulls
the song nobody knows
because anyone who had heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.
I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song
is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique
at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:
the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see beached skulls
the song nobody knows
because anyone who had heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.
I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song
is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique
at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.
—Margaret
Atwood
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