Distillations: An Introduction

Welcome to Distillations, a monthly review of Speculative Poetry. The field of Speculative Poetry embraces every subgenre of science fiction and fantasy imaginable in every existing poetry form, plus some made up fresh for the occasion. What it doesn’t include is a lot of words. That means that every letter, every piece of punctuation, every space for breath must carry a heavier load than its prose counterpart. Speculative Poetry is a distillation of the same universes, dimensions, and mental states explored in fiction. This column will attempt to gather the best in a double-distillation of words.

With that in mind, let’s begin at the end. Lise Goett’s poem, “Thanatos,” appears in the Fall 2007 issue of Farrago’s Wainscot. It begins with a scene that appears to be from classical times, “an ampitheater holds them like a chalice.” However, this image is quickly revealed to be the more ordinary setting of a Driver’s Ed course. Indeed, “his address could be from the farm report; his dry recital of quantities consumed..” But soon the death promised in the title is seeping into every line “but not a word is said about what makes a man / want to kill himself, that alpine lake that glimmers…” It is hard to tell which element is more scary in this poem—the idea of death as a conscious being or the sheer beauty with which it is portrayed. This poem does not so much glorify death, as stay in its presense without fear. Reading this poem is a personal, intimate experience like death itself.

Another, gentler image of beauty is provided by Rachel Swirsky. Within the first few lines of a poem, you either have your reader, or you don’t. This harsh truth is softened considerably by the grace of what happens when you do. In “A Season With the Geese” appearing in issue #23 of Abyss & Apex, Swirsky begins with “Once when we were young, we flew / to Europe with the geese / Twined neck to neck.” This is not the last graceful image in a poem that also includes “geese / feather the moon.” The speculative element arrives in the suggestion that the narrator was once one of these geese and the wistfulness of a lost time of freedom.

Continuing in this wistful mood is Drew Morse’s poem “Overcoming Distance (for Eris & Dysnomia)” in the Summer 2007 issue of Astropoetica. This poem comments on the grand battles of definition in modern astronomy, but it is not about Pluto’s recent demotion: “The things of importance are lost / in the rituals of naming: / ‘Transneptunian’? ‘dwarf’? ‘KBO’?” Instead, this poem gives a voice to other orbiting objects “Half again as girthy as Pluto—” which have their own remote place around the sun. However, the real beauty of this poem comes at the end when Morse explains the importance of these objects “Surely, like Matoaka, you come / To illuminate the borderlands— / And to speak for your kin…” Science fiction has always embraced the outsiders, and what could be farther out than these cold, dark objects which do not seem to deserve even the dignity of a name. This issue of dignity is behind a lot of the strong emotions on the subject of Pluto’s demotion, and Morse’s poem does an excellent job of making an argument not only for Pluto’s worth, but also the even smaller, countless named but unknown objects in the solar system.

In one column, three poems, we have gone from death, to lost flight, to the edges of the solar system. However, this sampling barely touches the edges of the speculative poetry available in print and on the net. Next month, we’ll explore more wonder, possibilities, and improbabilities. Who knows what the universe will come up with next?