13 Ways of Looking at Speculative Poetry

[ade...@gmail.com]

So I thought I'd start the discussion in earnest by asking: what do
people consider speculative poetry? And, according to one's interests
in that regard, what gets you fired up/passionate about speculative
poetry?

I'm cutting and pasting, here, something I wrote in the comment section
of a Speculative poetry syposium I was a part of at Strange Horizons.
This is by no means definitive, but perhaps a way to get the ball
rolling:

Here's my take on speculative poetry--while I do think there's some
blobby overlap between SF and F strategies with poem-creation, I think
there are some important differences too. Or at least, different ways
of reading as well as writing work.

1. using SF iconography as a sort of compost. Realistic-poet might
write about growing up on a farm as a metaphor for alienation.
Speculative poet might write about killer androids as a metaphor for
alienation. Genre poets often take themes and tropes from stuff that's
in the magazines; at best it can produce some interesting speculations,
at worst they become "stories with line breaks". Nongenre poets working
with these forms often take a more pop culture approach with the
tropes. (Kevin Davies's Comp. although it doesn't purely work in this
form). (btw, check out his free e-book Pause Button, which was his
first book).

2. writing poems from a future-perspective; that is, a persona poem
from someone in the future, postulating future linguistic and
syntactical changes. I think something like Andrew Joron's
"Constantinople II" hovers on the edge--is it a lyric poem by someone
in the future? Or a visionary poem by someone (a "speaker") in the
present? (although the bracketed text in the third-to-last stanza makes
me lean towards the former).

3. effect-driven SF poetry whose primary purpose is to evoke sense of
wonder. I don't know if, entirely, this can be a separate category. I
tend to think it's a lazy default category, kind of like it is with
prose fiction. On the other hand, this seems for me to be the most
straight-up channeling of ideas of Romanticism and the sublime, fwiw.

4. scientist poets; e.g., Miroslav Holub (renowned immunologist,
renowned poet), A.R. Ammons to a lesser extent; poems about science
that don't those SFnal trappings.

5. straight up EPIC. Classic example (for me) is Henri Martinson's
Aniara. Norman Dubie's Spirit Tablets of Goa Lake. If anything, this is
underutilized in the various fields; most narrative pieces tend to be
set pieces in a narrative-lyric mode.

Best,
Alan

[graywyvern]

also i think there is such a thing as imaginary or fictional
aesthetics.

of course, it could be argued that this is simply the default for any
work that breaks new ground, & which later gets described into a
codified system of aesthetics.
but sometimes the idea comes first (e.g. oulipo, but maybe cubism
too...).
my point in bringing this up here is that i have invented a system of
aesthetics for, say, a fictional culture; & then tried to write poems
in that mode. for example, i decided to create "Sith poetry" which is:
always written in 2 different colors (at first, red + black, later:
more); sometimes reverse word order for several words; only pronoun "I"
& in the 4th place; a raised-dot between hemistiches; & other things
like references (the holy number 616; the Sith believe that "we are the
dead", & this place is the underworld of someplace prior & better...) &
various kinds of required word lists, ktp --the result was the poem
"2M1207b" (which i also wrote within the metarestriction i was, & am
still, using: omitting the letter E).

or i invent an aesthetic concept. (e.g. incorporating several kinds of
opposites at once as a measure of artistic excellence)
or i borrow one from a different culture. (yugen)
or absorb a paradigm from artworks alien to my normal practice, to
whatever degree i choose. (elephant painting; ghazals)

after awhile, i have a whole array of devices that i have internalized.
the complete meaning of what i write depends on understanding the
phases i have passed through in arriving at that point. and i veer back
into earlier modes, for the duration of a poem, or part of a poem.

these are all things that happen in ordinary literary culture. the
difference is, i wasn't that interested in how they are happening here&
now, & chose to make them happen in my work without regard for the
social context.

this is in itself a kind of meta-meta-aesthetics, & a gamble that the
work itself will maintain some hold upon future readers.

g.