A new essay about speculative poetry, written by Richard Fay, may be found here:
http://www.cyberwizardproductions.com/AbandonedTowers/nonfiction/specpoetry.html
It traces, concisely, the history of speculative poetry, from the epic of Gilgamesh to the present day. I think if you don't know where the heck speculative poetry comes from or you haven't read ancient fantastic poetical works, this essay will be a good introduction. It refers to many of the important ancient poems (and has references). However, I would like to see more information about recent (the last 50 years) speculative poetry. It is not that Richard ignores the recent past, it's just that so much has been written it would be nice if he drew attention to more of it. Steve Sneyd has already done this, but his publications are not available on the web. In any case, this essay will allow the readers new to speculative poetry to learn a little bit about where it is coming from.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Yeah, I know I skimmed over the more recent stuff. It wasn't as easy to find specific resources for the more recent material. My science background makes me very leery to wing-it when it comes to writing non-fiction.
I worried while writing the article that I didn't go into as much depth with the recent speculative poetry as I did with speculative poetry of the past, but one of my main goals was to show how many of the poems considered to be a part of the "standard" literary canon are actually speculative in nature. Besides, I could only say so much in under 2,000 word!
Perhaps a follow-up article covering more recent speculative poetry is in order.
Cheers!
Thanks for posting about the article, by the way.
I'm hoping it will get more people interested in speculative poetry, and the more we all spread the word, the more people we can introduce to the form.
Cheers!
Post a Comment