Latest Asimov’s came in, and sure enough, Bruce Boston did a third in his cycle of music poems, this one being “The Music of Werewolves,” a poem “rich in claw and fang and drool…” Good, fun lines in there. “as each incarnation transpires.” He seems to have a good little riff going. I probably like his “Extended Family,” even a bit better. It’s a review of where the various family members have got themselves off to: “Your daughter joins // a gravfree artist colony…” I admire the old-shoe comfortableness of that made up word, gravfree.
Ruth Berman has a couple poems as well, and as always, puts her slant, amuzing view of the universe on display. “Being One With Your Broom,” posits the different approaches one may take in riding — “if your broom // is sprouting into animal sense // and needs its twigs // facelike // forward…” a very difficult concept to get across, if you think about it, but handled with ease. And her “Vampire Politics,” goes all the way to satire, and gets my vote as the best poem of the issue. “And are accordingly opposed // To increases on the income tax”
But I don’t want to slight poor Geoffrey A. Landis, nor his poem, “Galileo’s Ink Spots Fade Into Twilight.” “Monks and madmen announce the day is near…” a regular sonnet. Don’t know if I’m the only one out here who likes to take a rhyming poem and go back over the rhymes, see how they fit, see how the poet might have been thinking about the words, constructing the phrases sort of backwards if you will, or which might have been the spur that got the whole thing going, the ones that came in the middle of the night and the rest of the poem just has to be recarved to make those phrases fit. So I ask you, of which type would be his phrase, “Pressure oscillations in the core” ?
Just a thought for the night.
Peace,
P M F
“Galileo’s Ink Spots”
Actually, that one came from the “Iron Poet” contest at the Toronto Worldcon, where the competing poets were given a “secret ingredient” and had to make up a poem in the given form on the spot, on the whiteboard. Making up a poem on the spot isn’t hard… what’s hard was the fact that a running commentary was made on each word I wrote as it hit the board.
The “secret ingredient” was the phrase “ink spots.”
You wrote a sonnet live, much less an Asimov’s quality one, with an audience full of hecklers commenting on every word as you went? I’ll be hornswoggled! I can’t imagine that. I gotta give you a bow, even a full obeisance for that! =—^– :->