POETRY

   Before about 1965 - although much earlier Lilith LORRAINE had published Wine of Wonder (coll 1951 chap), which she advertised as being the first volume of poetry devoted to sf - only isolated examples of sf poetry appeared in magazines like Unknown and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Yet now poetry appears regularly in SF MAGAZINES, anthologies andauthor collections. This change can be attributed to two separate periods of activity. The first centred on NEW WORLDS (NW) and the NEW-WAVE writers in the UK during the late 1960s. NW published a classic poem during this time, "The Head-Rape" (1968) by D.M. THOMAS. In 1979 Edward Lucie-Smith (1933-) anthologized this and other excellent poems like Edwin Morgan's"In Sobieski's Shield" and Thomas M. DISCH's "A Vacation on Earth" in Holding Your Eight Hands (HYEH) (anth 1969 UK), the first anthology of sf poetry. HYEH was followed closely by 2 other all-poetry anthologies, Frontier of Going (FG) (anth 1969 UK) ed John Fairfax and Inside OuterSpace (IOS) (anth 1970 US) ed Robert Vas Dias. FG and IOS were not sf per se but celebrations of SPACE FLIGHT and the Universe inspired by the Soviet/US space race and the unique lexicon of terms, and dreams, itengendered. Also notable were the infusion of a quantity of poetry into the text of Brian W. ALDISS's novel Barefoot in the Head (1969) and the book-length poem Aniara (1956 Sweden; trans 1963) by the Swedish poet Harry MARTINSON.A decade after HYEH, intense poetic activity in the USAcentred on the founding in 1978 of the Rhysling AWARDS (RA) for best sf poetry and their parent association, the Science Fiction Poetry Association, which was founded by Suzette Haden ELGIN. From the late 1970sto the mid-1980s, poets emerged who wrote a large body of their work within the genre, including in the USA Andrew Joron, Peter Dillingham, Kathy Rantala, Bruce BOSTON, Sonya DORMAN, Gene Van Troyer, DuaneAckerson, Terry A. Garey and Robert FRAZIER, as well as the UK's Steve Sneyd and Andrew Darlington. Established sf writers published a good deal of poetry - Ursula K. LE GUIN, Michael BISHOP, Ray BRADBURY, Jane YOLEN, Joe HALDEMAN and others - and poets from the mainstream crossed over: DickAllen, Marge PIERCY, William Stafford, Tom Whalen and Marilyn Hacker (1942-). During this time, many magazines started to feature the growing genre on a regular basis. Night Cry (NC) used horror poetry, while the science magazine Science (SC) prominently featured one factual poem per issue. AMAZING STORIES and ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE have often used two or more poems an issue. IASFM featured excellent sf poetry, like the Rhysling winners "The Migration of Darkness" (1979) by Peter Payack and "For Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets" (1984) by BruceBoston; while literary magazines like Speculative Poetry Review, Velocities (V), Uranus, Ice River, Umbral (UM), Star*Line (S*L), The Magazine of Speculative Poetry and the UK's Star Wine devoted themselves to fantastic poetry of all kinds.Fantastic poetry generally falls into 4 types: sf, as in Susan Palwick's "The Neighbor's Wife" (1985 AMZ) (RA), wherein a widowed man nurses a very alien woman to health and accepts her for a wife; science fact, as in Diane Ackerman's "Saturn" from her book The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral (1976), a long work often quoted by CarlSAGAN in his science books; macabre, as in Lucius SHEPARD's "White Trains" (1987 NC) (RA), about mirage-like trains that pass certain towns on the outskirts of their private mythologies; and speculative poetry, a catchall term for poems on the periphery of the fantastic, as in Joe Haldeman's almost otherworldly vision of Vietnam in "DX" (1987) or the surreal poetry of Ivan Arguelles.Other classic works include: "The Sonic Flowerfall of Primes" (1982 NW) (RA) and "Antenna" (1989) by Andrew Joron, with theirhard-science surrealism; "The Nightmare Collector" (1987 NC) (RA) by Bruce Boston; "The Well of Baln" (1981) by Ursula K. Le Guin; "Corruption ofMetals" (1977) (RA) by Sonya Dorman; "Two Sonnets" (1983 SC) by Helen Ehrlich; "Your Time and You" (1982 V) (RA) by Adam Cornford; "The Still Point" (1984 IASFM) by David Lunde; "Ybba" (1983 S*L) by Elissa Malcohn; "Lady Faustus" (1982 UM) by Diane Ackerman; and the World Fantasy Award-winning "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station" by John M. FORD (1988). Many of these recent works are anthologized in The Umbral Anthology (anth 1982) ed Steve Rasnic Tem, Burning with a Vision (anth 1984) ed Robert Frazier and Songs of Unsung Worlds (anth 1985) ed Bonnie Gordon. Also of great importance is the book-length THE NEW WORLD: AN EPIC POEM (1985) by Frederick TURNER.Several anthologies of mostly original poetry madeimpressions around the cusp of the 1990s: the award-winning Poly: New Speculative Writing (anth 1989) ed Lee Ballentine (1954-), Narcopolis \&Other Poems (anth 1989 chap) ed Peggy Nadramia and Time Frames (anth 1991) ed Terry A. Garey. The poet Scott Green has compiled an invaluable guide, Contemporary Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Poetry: A Resource Guideand Biographical Dictionary (1989).Star*Line, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry and Velocities continue, along with newcomer Dreams \& Nightmares,as strong poetry magazines. Ocean View Press, publisher of Poly, produces poetry collections by many of the authors mentioned here. And a large wave of fresh poets promises all the right stuff for the 1990s-people like Denise Dumars, Michael R. COLLINGS, W. Gregory Stewart, DavidKopaska-Merkel, t. (not T.) Winter-Damon, Ann K. Schwader, Roger Dutcher, Wendy Rathbone, Tom Wiloch, Terry McGarry, Sandra Lindow, Tony Daniel and Wayne Allen Sallee.

   RF