Extrapolating from small bits of data
Feb. 13th, 2013 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessOver on Amazing Stories, blogger Paul Cook has written a scathing commentary on science fiction poetry, saying that it all sucks.
Here's the slight problem with his argument: he is basing it entirely on some poems from Asimov's and one poem from Tor.com.
Now, I don't want to knock either zine. (Especially and for obvious reasons Tor.com.) But, and this is key, neither Asimov's nor Tor.com focuses on speculative poetry. Tor.com publishes a few poems to celebrate National Poetry Month once per year. Asimov's publishes more, but the chief focus there is fiction.
Thus, it's not surprising that only one poem from Asimov's and one poem from Tor.com were mentioned in the very long complete list of last year's Rhysling nominations. (The list from this upcoming year hasn't been released yet, so I just took the most recent one.) The winners were all published in other zines, both online and print. The last time a poem published in Asimov's won a Rhysling Award was in 2003. Not a single poem from Asimov's or Tor.com appeared on the Dwarf Stars list either. Versification, which focuses on reviewing speculative poetry zines and collections, doesn't mention Asimov's, although it does review a Tor.com poem. This...actually might speak well of Asimov's from Cook's point of view, since he also calls most Rhysling Award winners "puerile and, more often than not, embarrassing." Which may or may not be true* -- except that rather than looking at actual Rhysling Award winners, he looks at Asimov's poems, which are not necessarily the same thing.
I'll just skip over Cook's comment that science fiction poets receive "too much sycophancy and worship" (speaking of which, when do I get the sycophants? Is there an order form someplace) and his analysis of the Asimov's poems, and use the polite term for this sort of review: cherry-picking. Because Cook has managed to denounce all of science fiction poetry (yes, the first sentence of the post says "the three main short fiction journals in the field" ** but then assumes, and I would argue incorrectly, that these journals are representative of the speculative poetry field, even though none of these three journals claim to focus on the field) based on limited reading -- and while ignoring the zines that specifically focus on speculative poetry.
Most of these zines are online. (Dreams and Nightmares, which started way back in 1986, and Mythic Delirium are two that remain in print.) These include Goblin Fruit, Stone Telling, Astropoetica, inkscrawl, Through the Gate, and New Myths. And there's Strange Horizons, publishing a mix of poetry and fiction.
This is a very incomplete list. But what's striking about it is that at least two of the zines above -- Stone Telling and Strange Horizons -- are already publishing what Cook claims to want. (At least, Stone Telling is as close as I think any zine can come to "Sylvia Plath in space," although that's not exactly what Stone Telling is doing, and I type that knowing that its two editors may descend upon me in wrath for typing that phrase.) If you are looking for allusive, metaphorical, ambiguous work, poetry that stretches the boundaries of imagination and language, you might well want to look at the above zines.
And then we have his statement here:
Well, except that among the best known poems in English are "The Raven," "The Lady of Shallot," and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," all of which have more than a touch of the fantastic, if not, I admit, robots. Also, Browning and Robinson explored the fantastic every once in awhile, suggesting that yes, we do return year after year to poems that stretch into the fantastic.
We all do this sort of thing all the time of course -- The Bachelor sucks! Therefore, all reality TV sucks! -- me included. And I'm all for speculative poetry criticism. But an indictment of an entire genre based on just a couple of examples from journals not even claiming to represent the field makes me gulp.
On a related note, to avoid the same type of accusation, I think I'll go back and add more to my discussion of sexism in The Count of Monte Cristo before posting that.
* I found the poems in last year's Rhysling anthology to be a mixed bag -- some excellent, some not excellent, but that might be a question of my personal taste.
** This is a problematic statement for other reasons. Analog, Asimov's and F&SF are major in the field, but I'm not sure they can still be called the only main short fiction journals in the field. This is admittedly hard to quantify because it's not always clear if page views come from actual readers or bots, but page views suggest that Tor.com, Clarkesworld and Lightspeed have more readers than the three print journals. In terms of award nominations, which is an even more problematic method of judging readership/influence/etc., in the last three years nominees for the Hugo and Nebula awards have come from those three print journals AND Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Apex, Tor, and anthologies, in both the short story and novelette categories, as well as Giganotosaurus for the novelette category. So I'd say the field for major short fiction journals has expanded, which is an excellent thing for everybody.
Here's the slight problem with his argument: he is basing it entirely on some poems from Asimov's and one poem from Tor.com.
Now, I don't want to knock either zine. (Especially and for obvious reasons Tor.com.) But, and this is key, neither Asimov's nor Tor.com focuses on speculative poetry. Tor.com publishes a few poems to celebrate National Poetry Month once per year. Asimov's publishes more, but the chief focus there is fiction.
Thus, it's not surprising that only one poem from Asimov's and one poem from Tor.com were mentioned in the very long complete list of last year's Rhysling nominations. (The list from this upcoming year hasn't been released yet, so I just took the most recent one.) The winners were all published in other zines, both online and print. The last time a poem published in Asimov's won a Rhysling Award was in 2003. Not a single poem from Asimov's or Tor.com appeared on the Dwarf Stars list either. Versification, which focuses on reviewing speculative poetry zines and collections, doesn't mention Asimov's, although it does review a Tor.com poem. This...actually might speak well of Asimov's from Cook's point of view, since he also calls most Rhysling Award winners "puerile and, more often than not, embarrassing." Which may or may not be true* -- except that rather than looking at actual Rhysling Award winners, he looks at Asimov's poems, which are not necessarily the same thing.
I'll just skip over Cook's comment that science fiction poets receive "too much sycophancy and worship" (speaking of which, when do I get the sycophants? Is there an order form someplace) and his analysis of the Asimov's poems, and use the polite term for this sort of review: cherry-picking. Because Cook has managed to denounce all of science fiction poetry (yes, the first sentence of the post says "the three main short fiction journals in the field" ** but then assumes, and I would argue incorrectly, that these journals are representative of the speculative poetry field, even though none of these three journals claim to focus on the field) based on limited reading -- and while ignoring the zines that specifically focus on speculative poetry.
Most of these zines are online. (Dreams and Nightmares, which started way back in 1986, and Mythic Delirium are two that remain in print.) These include Goblin Fruit, Stone Telling, Astropoetica, inkscrawl, Through the Gate, and New Myths. And there's Strange Horizons, publishing a mix of poetry and fiction.
This is a very incomplete list. But what's striking about it is that at least two of the zines above -- Stone Telling and Strange Horizons -- are already publishing what Cook claims to want. (At least, Stone Telling is as close as I think any zine can come to "Sylvia Plath in space," although that's not exactly what Stone Telling is doing, and I type that knowing that its two editors may descend upon me in wrath for typing that phrase.) If you are looking for allusive, metaphorical, ambiguous work, poetry that stretches the boundaries of imagination and language, you might well want to look at the above zines.
And then we have his statement here:
There is a reason why SF poetry doesn’t work and it has to do with the nature of science fiction itself. (And that reason is the chief explanation why we don’t return year after year to science fiction poems when we return to Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, E.A. Robinson, and Wallace Stevens).
Well, except that among the best known poems in English are "The Raven," "The Lady of Shallot," and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," all of which have more than a touch of the fantastic, if not, I admit, robots. Also, Browning and Robinson explored the fantastic every once in awhile, suggesting that yes, we do return year after year to poems that stretch into the fantastic.
We all do this sort of thing all the time of course -- The Bachelor sucks! Therefore, all reality TV sucks! -- me included. And I'm all for speculative poetry criticism. But an indictment of an entire genre based on just a couple of examples from journals not even claiming to represent the field makes me gulp.
On a related note, to avoid the same type of accusation, I think I'll go back and add more to my discussion of sexism in The Count of Monte Cristo before posting that.
* I found the poems in last year's Rhysling anthology to be a mixed bag -- some excellent, some not excellent, but that might be a question of my personal taste.
** This is a problematic statement for other reasons. Analog, Asimov's and F&SF are major in the field, but I'm not sure they can still be called the only main short fiction journals in the field. This is admittedly hard to quantify because it's not always clear if page views come from actual readers or bots, but page views suggest that Tor.com, Clarkesworld and Lightspeed have more readers than the three print journals. In terms of award nominations, which is an even more problematic method of judging readership/influence/etc., in the last three years nominees for the Hugo and Nebula awards have come from those three print journals AND Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Apex, Tor, and anthologies, in both the short story and novelette categories, as well as Giganotosaurus for the novelette category. So I'd say the field for major short fiction journals has expanded, which is an excellent thing for everybody.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-02-13 08:16 pm (UTC)Yes to the rest of it.