110115

Last night we got made up and went out to see a play. Halfway there, at 50 mph on a major road, my van quit. We spent 2 hours in a dead van in the rain, and then AAA sent Fred Robertson's tow truck. A jump didn't help, and it seems my alternator is kaput. So then we got towed home. Instead of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, we watched 1.5 episodes of Hawaii Five-O on Netflix (I watched 2; my wife fell asleep after 1).

a night ruined
popcorn with family and
drama on TV

to write about writing about poetry

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.