This is your cubicle
You'll be cataloging
"Earth—Lit—Speculative Poetry"
Yeah, after it became all the rage—
their songs went out on every ship

Everyone who writes and reads and enjoys speculative poetry has to smile at that last stanza from Karen A. Romanko’s “Bibliotheca Temporis” (Dragons, Knights & Angels, Issue 31, April 2006). Don’t we wish it would become “all the rage” and that spacefaring ships would take it out even further than our wild, little world.

I wonder. Did you ever memorize an entire story? Probably not.

But I bet that at least once in all your years of schooling that you memorized a poem, something short (a nursery rhyme) or a sonnet or a poem for a talent program (“The Wreck of the Hesperus” or “The Highwayman”?) or a psalm for a church presentation? How many of us have memorized Psalm 23 or passages from Song of Songs?

Poetry can be quite memorable, because of the meter or the rhyme structure or the progression of images or the alliteration. Stories less so.

Reiterative note: The lesson there is that if you would have more memorable stories, learn to use the tools of poetry in your prose. Then, perhaps, spacefarers will carry passages of your speculative stories out to the stars, when doing so becomes the rage.

Today, let’s explore more of the speculative poetry out there that employs Christian topics or symbols or allusions. Let’s begin with Rhysling nominated poet (and gifted fiction writer) Marsheila Rockwell’s “On the Seventh Day” and her images of a God who has been laboring hard:

 
Sunlight prisms

Off a single bead of sweat

I bet  you can see that, the colors, the shape of the bead, that comes off the anthropomorphized brow of a Creator who has completed a masterwork. But did you listen to it? The slowed down stateliness of the first line with its stress/unstress pattern, then the quicker step of the second line composed nearly of all monosyllabic words. The beautiful way it feels in your mouth, the highlighting of BEAD and SWEAT by the rhythm.  And all those ssssssss sounds. And then this wonderful Sabbath image:

He relaxes in a hammock

Strung between the stars

This is a perfect image of a cosmic Sabbath rest. Perfect. Notice the way you feel led to hold the sound of STRUNG…hold, hold, hold it high in your mouth, in your nose, in the air….then leave it,  read on in an onrush. The sound mirrors the image of suspension and then that breathing out of words as if one is sighing in one’s relaxation.

(For you prose stylists, think of your scenes that have a particular tone you can enhance with poetic techniques. In your tense scenes, what rhythm would work best? In your reflective and moody scenes, what words and sounds would evoke the emotion for your reader. What images and metaphors would clinch the moment of revelation or betrayal or jubilation?)

We move on along with that “bead of sweat”…


To Eden’s fertile soil far below

And from the clay thus formed

Spring forth unicorns, chimeras,

Fish-eyed mermaids draped with pearls

And here we are in the full-fledged world of fantasy. The poet takes the “what if” of speculation and draws these marvelous images that say, “Yes, the fantastical world, too, springs from God, because it all does.” The poem tells us these beings were “not meant for this creation,” which is true, these do not exist in the atoms and molecules of our reality, but they exist and vividly we are creators, as God who made us is a creator. We, beguiled by “Divine whimsy” become creators of new worlds ourselves.

Now, let’s move on to Marsheila’s Rhysling-nominated poem, “Fairy Tale Ending,” where the poem is not overtly Christian, but the deadly image of a dream-killing serpent takes anyone familiar with tale of Eden straight into the pages of Genesis by way of fantasy. Here a “little girl princess” with the usual dreams of a charming prince and a fabulous royal wedding and a happy-ever-after has a rude awakening with the dark truth that, sometimes, dreams end very badly:

He did not ride a snow-white stallion
Or even croak a swampy serenade
Instead he hissed and slithered

As a girl raised on fairy tales might think, a kiss will fix it all. The spell will be broken. The frog (or snake) transformed by mercy or love or compassion into a thing of beauty and delight. But like Eve, the beautiful creature does not wish her well, and it’s in his nature to bring destruction. Christians know Satan masquerades in his beauty, but hides something deadly. So does this one. He bites the princess, she dies—“on the day that you eat it, you will die”—and then we find a lovely bit of reverse poison:

Then he coiled up on a rock
Next to her lifeless body
Sunning himself and wondering
Why his dreams were now full
Of sparkling stones
White flowing gowns
And hearts that never got broken

Eve did not do the serpent good, but here, the absolute goodness and hopefulness and optimism of the princess has left its shining taint in the snake. Goodness is powerful. Dreams are powerful. Never doubt it.

You’ll note that this sequence could easily be written as an ‘adult fairy tale’ type of story. One that could end powerfully with that very line: “The serpent wondered why his dreams were now full of sparkling stones, white flowing gowns, and hearts that never got broken.”  Good writing is good writing, in the vertical or the horizontal. Imagery is always something that will add to your storytelling (prose or poetry). Remember that when you’re crafting your novel. Allusions, metaphors, images: They work triple-duty.

But this packs quite a punch as a poem, and I’m very glad Marsheila wrote it and that I could read it. It well-deserved its nomination. I'm also glad she didn't hit us over the head with too obvious a connection, too much explained. We don't need to have every step drawn in for a reader of fiction or poetry. Much of the magic is in the gaps, the places we fill with our own knowledge and truths.

As I depart, I encourage you to read Marsheila’s “Pilates Wife” at The Sword Review. It’s nominated this year for a Rhysling.

Note: Last week I mentioned we'd have a guest post today. Well, the guest poster is too busy, so he's been moved to April, looks like. Still, worth the wait.

Next Week: More on speculative poetry. Come on, you know it's good for you and just plain good.