I’ll be honest with you. Most SF poetry sucks. At least, what I have read of it. I think part of the reason is that you can’t build a new world in a poem, without making it unwieldy. I could be wrong, it might just be me. But I did learn soemthing recently, and it’s led to creating poetry from SF novels, and I’m rather pleased with the results. Not my words, so they are in no way mine… I am not a poet.
Most of my posts for Amazing Stories are about writing, or indie publishing, or things to do with the business side of the industry. But today I wanted to do something a bit different. I’m in school, taking two literature classes this semester, and in the good class (yes, there is also a bad class) we learned about making ‘found poetry’ a process that I really enjoyed. I came home, looked at my shelves full of eclectic books, and said “hm… I wonder what I could do with some classic SF. So here you are. The words and phrases from each book were selected in order, I know some found poetry allows for rearrangement but it’s less of a challenge.
The Golden People
Fred Saberhagen
We’re at the top
He flickered away
one good hand
What do you think it means
to be human?
giant child, demanding attention
only animals
The aura of her mind
fine perfume.
The Witches of Karres
James H. Schmitz
Just plain fate
a helpless kid, anyway
two little sisters
Mass history
stood the three witches
silent voraciousness
The junior witches nodded
behave yourself every second
more or less like normal children.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Robert A. Heinlein
Fair dinkum thinkum
And woke up.
vips in huhu
solid, lovely structure
your air bottle, not mine.
we can throw rocks at Terra
interesting philosophy
fragile sack of protoplasm
we waited busily.
the prudent course.
Then he did die.
So now here is my challenge to you: create some found poetry of your own. I discovered that by doing this I made myself look very closely at the word choices used in these books. I read very quickly, and as a result, am much more likely to feel the characters, see the worlds, and be drawn on by the action, missing the language as it sublimates to my imagination. I don’t think that will ever change, but it is a good exercise for me to look more closely at the bones of a story from time to time. Perhaps it will make me a better writer.
