Poet's Workshop

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Poet's Workshop Presents: Defining Speculative Poetry? Let’s Not... by Terrie Leigh Relf ©2003 All rights reserved

What does the word, "speculative", mean?

Perhaps a better question, because poetry is both a process and a product, is: what does "to speculate" mean?

Well, it’s an action verb. But what—or who—is acting? What type of action is it? When is it acting? How is it acting? Why is it acting? Upon whom is it acting?

You may have heard me say that the dictionary is not an "end point" when seeking the definitions—or meanings--of things. You’re not going to find a definition on speculative poetry in the Oxford or the American Heritage Dictionaries. If you did consult a dictionary, then you’d discover that one of the definitions is: "to form opinions about something without having definite knowledge or evidence."

What does that tell us? Is it even accurate? How does it help us to define—or otherwise characterize, thus categorize speculative poetry? Why attempt to categorize it in the first place? Because it’s part of human nature to label, to define, to categorize, and thereby to "know" a thing?

But meanings shift. New things come into being. Poetry is composed of language, and language is organic...

Someone sent me an article where Ray Bradbury said that he considers himself a fantasy, rather than a science fiction, writer. I usually categorize him as both. Isn’t the Heisenbergian known/unknown dynamic at the heart of this? As Stephen W. Hawking says in an excerpt from A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, The Uncertainty Principle (see site below):

"The uncertainty principle had profound implications for the way in which we view the world. Even after more than fifty years they have not been fully appreciated by many philosophers, and are still the subject of much controversy. The uncertainty principle signaled an end to Laplace’s dream of a theory of science, a model of the universe that would be completely deterministic: one certainly cannot predict future events exactly if one cannot even measure the present state of the universe precisely!"

We can wax even more philosophical when considering the power of the mind...If we feel—or believe—that something is real, isn’t it, if only to ourselves? Think of imagination, of those books and poems that have transferred you from your own world into another, that Sartrian exchange of author and reader. The meaning occurs when the two are connected...Or perhaps I should say, your meaning, your experience of the book or poem occurs then...

As you can see, I wasn’t sure as to how to define "speculative poetry", so I put another call out to the SFPA. If you read May’s Interview with the SFPA (see the archives if you missed it), the word, "speculative", was mentioned quite a bit and I failed to define it.

David Kopaska-Merkel, the publicist for Dreams and Nightmares, says: "Speculative poetry differs from mainstream poetry in focusing on subjects that lie outside our modern everyday experience. I do not think that the style or form of speculative poetry differs all that much, although it does tend to be less introspective and self-absorbed than some mainstream poetry." He also adds that "Steve Sneyd (who lives in Britain) is probably the world’s expert on early speculative poetry."

As to the relationship between fantasy and SF, Kopaska-Merkel says that he includes "fantasy and SF poetry as subgroups of spec poetry. No one has ever been able to define either fantasy or SF to general satisfaction. Horror is something different; its tropes are not like those of SF or fantasy; at least if one defines horrific poetry with fantasy tropes as dark fantasy rather than horror."
He offers the following poem as an example:

A Garden Adversus
by
David Kopaska-Merkel

The tomatoes were whispering At their end of the garden, Huddling close so no one could read their lips, And looking sharply over their shoulders. One of the banana peppers sidled over to listen, But was suckered viciously and forced to retreat. All she heard before she was driven out of range Was something about pasta. Or it could have been "monster," she said. The Romas are behind it, The curvaceous Japanese eggplant hissed, But the zucchini defended its compatriots staunchly: It’s those sots the Brandywines, Or one of the archaic pleated varieties; The Romas are far too civilized! The zinnias could have been valuable allies, On account of their clear vision, But they remained aloof as usual. Meanwhile, the plot thickened. The largest of the bell peppers Went over to the other side, And the habaneros called for a preemptive strike. Never mind that the Jerusalem artichokes were Not yet in bloom, and the Entire anti-tomato force was unprepared for war. Suddenly, the tomatoes struck, In a suicide attack that Spattered the garden with gore. The battle teetered in the balance, and The lemon basil volunteered to sue for terms, But the whole garden knew He was inadequate to the task. It was, in any case, too late: The victory of the tomatoes was total. Shouting that they needed "Leaf Room," The tomatoes volunteered in every bed, And within a season the entire garden Fell to the red menace.

(NOTE: This piece was recently published in the first issue of the Birmingham Arts Review.)

Sandra Lindow contends that "speculative poetry can bridge the gap between science fiction and fantasy." Her poem, Mrs. Ezekial (from A Celebration of Bones) illustrates this. She adds that it "was inspired by an article in Science News."

Mrs. Ezekial Writes Home

After we moved to Montana,
My husband’s hand was upon the Rototiller
When he called me out of the house,
"Wilma, come see this, the garden is full of dry bones!"

He led me back and forth along fresh cut rows
Where I’d a mind broccoli and Burbanks would grow;
And I saw a great many bones, dirty white shafts and knobs
like broken porcelain bathroom fixtures jutting from the shallow soil.

Then he asked me, "Mother of My Children,
Can these bones live?" and I said onto him,
"Those who wore these bones, their time is over;
We live here now, let them rest."

But he gathered the bones,
First clearing the books from the shelves in the den
Then commandeering the dining room floor.
Six foot femurs, a four foot jaw; I stepped over them setting the table.

When he tried to connect them, he hadn’t the knack;
So he said to the bones, "I’ll show you who’s boss.
The earth was laid like an egg in 8,000 B.C.
Your time was never, you fakers, you phonies."

And while he was prophesying to the bones,
There was a noise, a rattling sound;
And the bones came together, bone to bone.
Tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them

But there was no breath.
Then I said to the father of my children,
"Remove that monster from my house before it breathes
And remembers what six-inch serrated fangs are for."

But he only replied, "Don’t bother me, woman,
I’m on a roll!" and climbed onto my Duncan Phyfe table
Proclaiming, "Come from the four winds, oh breath,
And breathe into this one that was slain that he may live."*

And the beast** stood up, crashing through ceiling and attic,
A full forty feet of carnivorous flesh grinning toothily
Through a hole in the shingles, thigh-size forelimbs
With four hundred pounds each of tearing and crushing power.

The rest is history, you might say. The china cabinet, the whatnot,
The shadow box, the buffet, the dining set, all gone;
And my husband, best not get into that. In any case,
That’s why I’m asking, Mother, for me and the kids to be moving back home.

*Ezekial 37:9
**TyrannosaurusRex--Order: Saurischia, Infraorder: Carnosauria, Suborder:Theropoda
Family: Tyrannosauridae; Nickname: "the Schwarzenegger of Dinosaurs" Science News 7/14/90

Drew Morse, an SFPA member who wasn’t available for last month’s interview, just completed his dissertation, A New Discipline of Vision, at the University of Oregon. The focus is on speculative poetry. Auspicious, isn’t it? (Congratulations, Drew! Wish we could all be there to celebrate this phenomenal accomplishment with you...How do I get a copy of your dissertation?)

During our interview, Morse addressed the issue of narrative voice in speculative poetry, and whether it is authorial and/or fictional. He states that while speculative verse utilizes authorial narrative, that this is "equally true of ’mainstream’ verse; the narratorial voice of a poem is almost always at very least a persona of the poet, not the actual poet speaking. And though there are certainly many speculative poems that construct fictional characters to be their speaking voice(s), again, the same is true of non-genre work."

In Defining ’Speculative Poetry’: The Benefits of Not Defining, Morse states:

"One of the most important things to realize about defining "speculative poetry" is that the genre is, and will probably always be, resistant to concrete, immovable definitions; the goals and parameters of the genre are in constant flux. This is one of the genre’s greatest strengths—and a large part of what makes it so stimulating and illuminating to be an engaged reader of past, present and future speculative verse." He also discusses the work of Gene van Troyer and Robert Frazier’s Defining the Beyond, where van Troyer is quoted as saying that "to finally arrive at the ’perfect’ definition of a thing is to arrive at the death of the thing we are trying to describe.’" Morse cautions that "[t]his doesn’t, of course, mean that it’s not valuable to think critically about what SF/speculative poetry is and ought to be; it just means that any definition of the genre must be dynamic."

Morse addresses the relationship between science fiction and speculative poetry. He states: "The term ’speculative poetry’ has arisen out of two desires within the science fiction poetry community: (1) to gain respectability by distancing the genre from SF’s pulp heritage; and (2) to expand the boundaries of what kinds of subject matter and forms are appropriate for the genre." There is a "blurring of boundaries", he states, and adds that this blurring "is also the chief deficiency of the term ’speculative poetry’; what kinds of verse does it exclude?"

During the latter part of our correspondence, Morse indicates that speculative poetry has a place within "the Context of a Larger Movement". He expands this by saying:

"As your previous article makes clear, there is a fairly vibrant and active body of speculative poets—a speculative poetry "movement," as such (there are manifestoes, organizations, representative publications, etc., so I think SF/speculative poetry must be viewed as one of the more vital poetic movements of the last few decades—though others, such as New Formalism/New Expansivism have certainly garnered more widespread attention.) One thing to avoid, though, is automatically saying that the movement itself defines the nature of ’speculative verse.’

In this regard, Ballentine’s observation that ’speculative writing is not the sole province of those represented’ in the genre’s definitive magazines and anthologies brings to light two important points. First, there are a great many poets who write verse best characterized as ’speculative,’ but who have not been recognized as such. There are also some writers whose work is considered representative of the genre who ’do not seek, or even accept, the designation’ of ’speculative poet,’ to borrow more of Ballentine’s phrasing. Many poets, in other words, write speculative verse, regardless of whether they intend to—or even recognize they are doing so. (One of the joys of reading broadly—as a few of your previous interviewees suggested—is discovering just how many non-genre poets are writing wonderfully insightful and imaginative speculative verse; lately I’ve been entranced by the speculative poems written by Nobel chemist Roald Hoffmann; I’ve also been savoring some great speculative verses in the collections of Frederick Seidel, Diane Ackerman and Frederick Turner.)"

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this month’s column. In closing, for some strange reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about Aristotle while I was writing. I turned away from my computer to one of my book shelves and pulled down George A. Kennedy’s ARISTOTLE ON RHETORIC: A Theory of Civic Discourse.
He states:

"In Nichomachean Ethics...Aristotle says that the soul possesses truth through five intellectual processes: epist_m_, or scientific knowledge; tekn_, or art; phron_sis, or practical wisdom; sophia, or philosophical wisdom; and nous, or intuitive reason" (Newly translated with Introduction, Notes, and Appendixes. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. 288.).

Is this an origin for the adage, "writing from the soul"? Aren’t these "five intellectual processes" part of what speculative poetry embodies? What of the "body of space"? I don’t think we need a physicist or an astronomer to tell us that space defies categorizing, and I don’t think we need philosophers to tell us that we need to keep dreaming—and believing in those dreams.

Here are a few resources. Keep reading for more!

The Magazine of Speculative Poetry http://www.sff.net/people/Roger-Dutcher/#msp

The Ultimate Science Fiction Poetry Guide
http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/sfpo.html

Read the entire Hawking excerpt here: http://ideaplace.org/Chemistry/ChemMisc/HawkingC4.html

If you have any questions, comments, or want to "chat an issue up", contact me at terrie@WritersMonthly.com

Q&A

This time I asked the question and received an excellent response—from Bruce Boston. Thank you Bruce...

Q: Do you have a list of suggested reading?

Bruce Boston: Here are the major anthologies in the field as I see them. Some of the details in the following list borrow, with thanks, from Steve Eng’s excellent survey article on SF poetry that appears in Anatomy of Wonder 4 edited by Neil Barron (R. R. Bowker, 1995).

Holding Your Eight Hands: An Anthology of Science Fiction Verse, ed. by Edward Lucie-Smith, Doubleday, 1970. 58 poems by 36 poets, including Brian Aldiss, John Brunner, Thomas Disch, and C.S. Lewis.

The Umbral Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry, ed. by Steve Rasnic Tem, Umbral Press, 1982. 141 poems by 61 poets, including Ray Bradbury, Disch, Robert Frazier, and William Stafford.

Burning with a Vision: Poetry of Science and the Fantastic, ed. by Robert Frazier, Owlswick, 1984. 130 poems by 56 poets, including Michael Bishop, Ursula Le Guin, Jane Yolen, Bruce Boston, and Loren Eisley.

POLY: New Speculative Writing, ed. by Lee Ballentine, Ocean View Books, 1989. A mix of both fiction and poetry, with an emphasis on surrealism and experiment. 69 poems by 25 poets, including Bradbury, Disch, Diane Ackerman, John Oliver Simon, Frazier, Boston, Andrew Joron.

Whispering Words, ed. by David Bain, A/A Productions, 1998 (?). http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/4464/ The only major genre poetry collection online. It also can be downloaded as a PDF file. Billed as "nearly 150 poems of the fantastic by the best mainstream and H/F/SF poets of the 1990s." Includes Michael Arnzen, Boston, Keith Allen Daniels, Corrine DeWinter, Frazier, John Grey, D. F. Lewis, Jacie Ragan, Darrell Schweitzer, W. Gregory Stewart, William John Watkins, t. winter-damon, and many others.

2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology, ed. by Keith Allen Daniels, Anamnesis, 2001. 125 poems by many of the top contemporary poets in the field. Includes Boston, G. O. Clark, Frazier, Charlee Jacob, David Lunde, David Memmot, Wendy Rathbone, Ann K. Schwader, Steve Sneyd, Mary Turzillo, Watkins and others.

Don’t forget to read the work of SFPA’s poets!

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