Sometimes I feel that I'm just screaming into the wind...

Poet and friend Mike Allen just posted this description of an upcoming World Fantasy Panel:

Poetry in Fantasy: Yesterday and Today
Time: 11am-12pm, Nov. 7, Regency F
Panelists:Mike Allen (M), Maria Alexander, Rain Graves, David Lunde, Laurel Winter

Description: Including poetry in fantasy, both by the author and quoted from other sources, used to be more common, such as Alice in Wonderland, The Lord of the Rings, and The Worm Ouroboros. Why is poetry not as prevalent now as in the past? Are certain types of poetry, such as non-formal or non-rhyming verse, under-used in fantasy?

Why is poetry not as prevalent now as in the past?

After blinking at this for a bit, I went to YouTube, and typed in "Rains of Castamere," a poem that first appeared in a fantasy book published in 2000. YouTube currently lists 165,000 videos of this song, including versions sung by cats. YouTube also lists 26,000 versions of "The Bear and the Maiden Fair," a poem that originally appeared in the same series.

One of last year's most popular fantasy movies was Frozen, which had, as I recall, quite a few songs/poems. Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, Sofia Samatar, Theodora Goss, L.E. Modesitt and multiple others have included poems in their prose work. And this isn't even considering the multiple, successful online zines publishing or focusing on poetry today, fantastic or otherwise. I'd argue that poetry, and in particular speculative poetry, is far more prevalent and visible than it's ever been.

But...for some reason, this prevalence doesn't get recognized in the field. Granted, part of this is that poetry collections (as opposed to poems that appear in prose works, HBO shows, or Disney cartoons) in general don't sell well, whatever their theme. But I don't think that quite justifies ignoring the fact that yesterday afternoon, the next door neighbor kids were shrieking "LIBRE SOY! LIBRE SOY!" (the Spanish version of "Let it Go,") for TWENTY SOLID MINUTES. Poetry's popular. It's out there. Let's celebrate it.

Oooh, and speaking of World Fantasy

I forgot to mention: yes, I will be attending World Fantasy Convention, November 6 - 9, in Arlington, VA. As far as I know, I have nothing scheduled.

(And yes, that includes the SFWA meeting. I fully understand why it's scheduled at that unreasonable hour, and also that I'm probably the only one who thinks it's unreasonable, but I think it's safe to say I shall be hunting for coffee at that particular moment.)

Which suggests that, as always, probably the best place to find me is either at the coffee or the bar.

Various people suggested that I owe attendees a bit of a warning for this one. No, it's not about the wheelchair, it's about me and DC, namely that generally when I head to DC Bad Things Happen: hurricanes, snipers, people in tractors threatening to blow up the Washington Monument, a fire at a certain party at American University that I thought we were never ever going to mention again (cough) and so on. This does seem a touch unfair, but on the off chance that everyone has a point here, I am mentioning it.

Assuming we have no repeats of any of that, and even then, see you there!