Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Mars needs poems.
Showing posts with label poems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poems. Show all posts
Friday, May 3, 2013
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Of Rhysling Awards past
As you've likely heard by now, this year's Rhysling Award winners have been announced. Congratulations to Megan Arkenberg ("The Curator Speaks in the Department of Dead Languages") and Shira Lipkin ("The Library, After").
Looking back at past years' winners:
2010, Long: Kendall Evans and Samantha Henderson, "In the Astronaut Asylum"
2010, Short: Ann K. Schwader, "To Theia"
2009, Long: Geoffrey A. Landis, "Search"
2009, Short: Amal El-Mohtar, "Song for an Ancient City"(includes audio)
2008, Long: Catherynne M. Valente, "The Seven Devils of Central California"
2008, Short: F.J. Bergmann, "Eating Light"
2007, Long: Mike Allen, "The Journey to Kailash"
2006, Short: Mike Allen, "The Strip Search"
2005, Long: Tim Pratt, "Soul Searching"
2005, Short: Greg Beatty, "No Ruined Lunar City" (audio)
2004, Long: Theodora Goss, "Octavia Is Lost in the Hall of Masks" (includes video)
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
A Death in the Science Fiction Family
Sadness at the death of Ray Bradbury ...
There are the works of his that many of us are familiar with, including The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. But have you read any of his poems?
Too Much
Too much beauty
Too much delight
Too much of sun
And much of night.
It bursts my sight
It floods my heart
It knocks my dreams
With half-sensed art.
Too much of sky
And thus of land
Abundance brims
On every hand
To power the soul
And crush the blood
With harvestings
Of wild and good
That cause one's cries
To overflow
With more than being
Can see or know
Vast libraries
Of touch and tell
That soar in heaven
To drop in hell.
So lovely lean
Some sunsets' fire
That I am tinder,
Torch and pyre,
So lovely sing
Lost birds at dawn
That I am up
And flown and gone.
And where soul was—
An empty tree
Full branches my
Lost blood and me.
So breathing thus
And knowing such
I cry to God:
Too much! Too much!
Of What is Past, or Passing, or To Come
Of what is past, or passing, or to come,
These things I sense and sing, and try to sum.
The apeman with his cave in need of fire,
The tiger to be slain, his next desire.
The mammoth on the hoof a banquet seems,
How bring the mammoth down fills apeman's dreams.
How taunt the sabertooth and pull his bite?
How cadge the flame to end an endless night?
All this the apeman sketches on his cave
In cowards' arts that teach him to be brave.
So, beasts and fire that live beyond his lair
Are drawn in science fictions everywhere.
The walls are full of schemes that sum and teach,
To help the apeman reach beyond his reach.
While all his ape-companions laugh and shout:
"What are those stupid blueprints all about?!
Give up your science fictions, clean the cave!"
But apeman knows his sketching chalk can save,
And knowing, learning, moves him to rehearse
True actions in the world to death reverse.
With axe he knocks the tiger's smile to dust,
Then runs to slay the mammoth with spear thrust;
The hairy mountain falls, the forests quake,
Then fire is swiped to cook a mammoth steak.
Three problems thus are solved by art on wall:
The tiger, mammoth, fire, the one, the all.
So these first science fictions circled thought
And then strode forth and all the real facts sought,
And then on wall new science fictions drew,
That run through history and end with . . . you.
If I Were Epitaph
What would I say of me,
If I were Epitaph?
That there were silly bones in him?
The grim but made him laugh?
The jolly made him serious?
The glum made him delirious?
That lawyers talked him sleepy,
And made him snooze at noon,
But bed was his by nine o'clock
So he could rise with moon?
And roll upon the meadows
While other people dreamed,
With windows up and chilly
He smiled and only steamed?
They sealed him in a coffin
But could not make him stay,
His laugh too large, his smile too wide,
For any Death to lay?
No matter what the molder,
The maggot in his bin,
No measuring-worm could inch and cir-
Cumnavigate his grin?
If Universe should claim me
And keep me with a sleep
I'd open up my laughter
And drop the Abyss deep;
There we would lie all friendly,
The empty stars and I
And speak upon Creation
And with God occupy
The time that's left for burning,
A billion years to sup,
Then open wide God's laughter
And let Him eat me up.
Ah, the wonder in his words ...
Too much beauty
Too much delight
Too much of sun
And much of night.
It bursts my sight
It floods my heart
It knocks my dreams
With half-sensed art.
Too much of sky
And thus of land
Abundance brims
On every hand
To power the soul
And crush the blood
With harvestings
Of wild and good
That cause one's cries
To overflow
With more than being
Can see or know
Vast libraries
Of touch and tell
That soar in heaven
To drop in hell.
So lovely lean
Some sunsets' fire
That I am tinder,
Torch and pyre,
So lovely sing
Lost birds at dawn
That I am up
And flown and gone.
And where soul was—
An empty tree
Full branches my
Lost blood and me.
So breathing thus
And knowing such
I cry to God:
Too much! Too much!
Of What is Past, or Passing, or To Come
Of what is past, or passing, or to come,
These things I sense and sing, and try to sum.
The apeman with his cave in need of fire,
The tiger to be slain, his next desire.
The mammoth on the hoof a banquet seems,
How bring the mammoth down fills apeman's dreams.
How taunt the sabertooth and pull his bite?
How cadge the flame to end an endless night?
All this the apeman sketches on his cave
In cowards' arts that teach him to be brave.
So, beasts and fire that live beyond his lair
Are drawn in science fictions everywhere.
The walls are full of schemes that sum and teach,
To help the apeman reach beyond his reach.
While all his ape-companions laugh and shout:
"What are those stupid blueprints all about?!
Give up your science fictions, clean the cave!"
But apeman knows his sketching chalk can save,
And knowing, learning, moves him to rehearse
True actions in the world to death reverse.
With axe he knocks the tiger's smile to dust,
Then runs to slay the mammoth with spear thrust;
The hairy mountain falls, the forests quake,
Then fire is swiped to cook a mammoth steak.
Three problems thus are solved by art on wall:
The tiger, mammoth, fire, the one, the all.
So these first science fictions circled thought
And then strode forth and all the real facts sought,
And then on wall new science fictions drew,
That run through history and end with . . . you.
If I Were Epitaph
What would I say of me,
If I were Epitaph?
That there were silly bones in him?
The grim but made him laugh?
The jolly made him serious?
The glum made him delirious?
That lawyers talked him sleepy,
And made him snooze at noon,
But bed was his by nine o'clock
So he could rise with moon?
And roll upon the meadows
While other people dreamed,
With windows up and chilly
He smiled and only steamed?
They sealed him in a coffin
But could not make him stay,
His laugh too large, his smile too wide,
For any Death to lay?
No matter what the molder,
The maggot in his bin,
No measuring-worm could inch and cir-
Cumnavigate his grin?
If Universe should claim me
And keep me with a sleep
I'd open up my laughter
And drop the Abyss deep;
There we would lie all friendly,
The empty stars and I
And speak upon Creation
And with God occupy
The time that's left for burning,
A billion years to sup,
Then open wide God's laughter
And let Him eat me up.
Ah, the wonder in his words ...
Thursday, May 24, 2012
A man — Michael Swanwick — and his blog
Have you read any of Michael Swanwick's blog posts? Here are links to a few to whet your appetite:
Did you know that Swanwick used to have a blog focusing on poems? ("This is not a course on poetry. It has no design or systematics. Its
only purpose is to point out how easy poetry can be to enjoy.")
Alas, that blog ended in December 2008, but many great finds there.