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White Space
WHITE SPACE brings together 38 previously uncollected poems, including ten originals, four Rhysling Award nominees, and the 2001 Rhysling Winner (Science Fiction Poetry Association) for the best short poem of the year, "My Wife Returns As She Would Have It," reprinted from Asimov's Science Fiction.
92 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2001
1 person is currently reading
5 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Boston
357 books118 followersI've published more than sixty books and chapbooks, including the novels Stained Glass Rain and the best-of fiction collection Masque of Dreams. My work ranges from broad humor to literary surrealism, with many stops along the way for science fiction, fantasy, and horror. My novel The Guardener's Tale (Sam's Dot, 2007) was a Bram Stoker Award Finailist and a Prometheus Award Nominee. My stories and poems have appeared in hundreds of publications, including Asimov's SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase, and received a number of awards, most notably, a Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov's Readers' Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. For more information, please visit my website at http://www.bruceboston.com/
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 10, 2024
A collection of speculative poetry where even the title extends an invitation to the imagination.
Physically speaking, poetry is black text on a white background – mentally, it's so much more colourful:
that when you come upon
a poem that speaks to you,
or better yet sings,
you can find yourself
falling into that white void,
tumbling into a vision
played out with paper and ink ('White Space: Speculative Poetry', p. 11)
Between the lines is where the real magic is. The text is needed to make those gaps, but it's in the gaps that the reader include themselves and brings the colour absent from the black and white page.
What a dedication to the reader lies in the title White Space! Perhaps it's meeker than the poet deserves – we all know how good inspiration compels our thoughts as compared to what is utterly uninspiring – but it acknowledges that the power of the written word is often in as well as upon the mind of the receiver, the reader.
Beyond any other characteristic, it's the ability to provide mental stimulation that separates good poetry from less so. Though, of course, it's hardly the only characteristic the reader seeks in it, but it's undeniably true that when a passage like the following passes by one's inner eye, imagination bull-rushes the mind, unstoppable by fetters or distracting morsels – it cannot be denied.
We watched the cities gravel into ruin,
sky towers capsized in a shifting jigsaw mass,
great bridges wrenched from their sockets,
reduced to an anguish of metal ligaments. ('Dance Macabre', p. 77)
This description of a broken city in the throes of an apocalypse, is vivid. The images in it's wake is grandiose and suitably macabre, filled in by the reader; the emotions are even more individual, be they the horror of a world in its undoing, or the grief of it, the breathless excitement of it, or yet some other sensation. It also serves as an example of the 'goodness' of poetry: The last line is particularly loath to let go of my musings – there are good reasons as to why this quote was the first to come to my mind when an example was called for.
The collection begins and ends with an appeal to our ability to colour the scene typed out before us, yet at opposite ends. Whereas the first poem, as quoted in the very beginning of the review, is a dedication to the reader and their imagination, the thirty-eight and final poem is dedicated to the writers who create what is to be coloured.
When the last SF magazine
publishes its last issue,
refunds its subscriptions,
and closes its doors forever,
forever after will be undone. ('When the Last SF magazine Closes Its Doors', p. 88)
Fiction in its entirety is a speculation on what isn't known nor understood to be true. If nothing in a tale is a figment then it becomes entirely documentarian, all fact and no more in need of the reader's embellishment than a curiosity towards further facts. However, fiction is often more salient than fact in that it allows us to add more to the tale, perhaps to make the narrative more intact and thus understandable, or to add to it more vivid components so that it'll stick out better among our memories.
for imagination's journeys
are of a different brand,
[...]
raw in flavor, rich with life,
ablaze within my mind,
far more full of fire and ice
than anything of mine. ('In a Spacers' Bar', p. 87)
That we in history class dream up new adventures for the people we're learning about, or make up some new persona for them, or perhaps venture on them ourselves, is something we do to improve our way to understand and store what we are being told... even if daydreaming usually comes at the cost of detaching our minds from the stream of information that is the class itself.
Speculative fiction appeals to another use we make of our imaginations. If we are to develop and learn by inductive thought we need to see the alternatives to reality as we know it, and 'alternative to reality' is the very definition of the genre. In reverse, speculative fiction exists because we do have a need to use our inductive/colouring/imaginative ability. Even the most frivolous tales, be they of dead wizards or dream merchants, of cursed husbands, of frog-prince comparative kissing, of aliens and whatever they are up to, of unnecessarily attractive robotic vampires, of being sold a yarn in a spacers' bar – they are all here to sate this need. We wouldn't be fully human, with all aspects thereof included, without them.
Anyone in possession of a collection by Boston knows how well they can unfetter their imaginations, to leave them colouring between the lines like giddy schoolchildren. White Space is, of course, no exception. Yet, beyond the quotes, I have dedicated little of this review to the specific poems herein. The thing is, if one was to buy this second hand (and it is long out of print by now) then one would have to dig deep into the wallet to do so: The cheaper copies fetch above eighty dollars. In other words, no one is going to read this as their first Boston collection. On the contrary, every reader of this will have to be willing to pay that kind of money or wait attentively in case someone happens to sell it for a more reasonable price. (Thank you to Chris Drumm for being that someone for me.) That demands a certain amount of dedication, more than mere curiosity.
Instead I followed the title of the book. Instead I followed the inspiration I found. Instead I coloured, as is the correct use of White Space.
Physically speaking, poetry is black text on a white background – mentally, it's so much more colourful:
that when you come upon
a poem that speaks to you,
or better yet sings,
you can find yourself
falling into that white void,
tumbling into a vision
played out with paper and ink ('White Space: Speculative Poetry', p. 11)
Between the lines is where the real magic is. The text is needed to make those gaps, but it's in the gaps that the reader include themselves and brings the colour absent from the black and white page.
What a dedication to the reader lies in the title White Space! Perhaps it's meeker than the poet deserves – we all know how good inspiration compels our thoughts as compared to what is utterly uninspiring – but it acknowledges that the power of the written word is often in as well as upon the mind of the receiver, the reader.
Beyond any other characteristic, it's the ability to provide mental stimulation that separates good poetry from less so. Though, of course, it's hardly the only characteristic the reader seeks in it, but it's undeniably true that when a passage like the following passes by one's inner eye, imagination bull-rushes the mind, unstoppable by fetters or distracting morsels – it cannot be denied.
We watched the cities gravel into ruin,
sky towers capsized in a shifting jigsaw mass,
great bridges wrenched from their sockets,
reduced to an anguish of metal ligaments. ('Dance Macabre', p. 77)
This description of a broken city in the throes of an apocalypse, is vivid. The images in it's wake is grandiose and suitably macabre, filled in by the reader; the emotions are even more individual, be they the horror of a world in its undoing, or the grief of it, the breathless excitement of it, or yet some other sensation. It also serves as an example of the 'goodness' of poetry: The last line is particularly loath to let go of my musings – there are good reasons as to why this quote was the first to come to my mind when an example was called for.
The collection begins and ends with an appeal to our ability to colour the scene typed out before us, yet at opposite ends. Whereas the first poem, as quoted in the very beginning of the review, is a dedication to the reader and their imagination, the thirty-eight and final poem is dedicated to the writers who create what is to be coloured.
When the last SF magazine
publishes its last issue,
refunds its subscriptions,
and closes its doors forever,
forever after will be undone. ('When the Last SF magazine Closes Its Doors', p. 88)
Fiction in its entirety is a speculation on what isn't known nor understood to be true. If nothing in a tale is a figment then it becomes entirely documentarian, all fact and no more in need of the reader's embellishment than a curiosity towards further facts. However, fiction is often more salient than fact in that it allows us to add more to the tale, perhaps to make the narrative more intact and thus understandable, or to add to it more vivid components so that it'll stick out better among our memories.
for imagination's journeys
are of a different brand,
[...]
raw in flavor, rich with life,
ablaze within my mind,
far more full of fire and ice
than anything of mine. ('In a Spacers' Bar', p. 87)
That we in history class dream up new adventures for the people we're learning about, or make up some new persona for them, or perhaps venture on them ourselves, is something we do to improve our way to understand and store what we are being told... even if daydreaming usually comes at the cost of detaching our minds from the stream of information that is the class itself.
Speculative fiction appeals to another use we make of our imaginations. If we are to develop and learn by inductive thought we need to see the alternatives to reality as we know it, and 'alternative to reality' is the very definition of the genre. In reverse, speculative fiction exists because we do have a need to use our inductive/colouring/imaginative ability. Even the most frivolous tales, be they of dead wizards or dream merchants, of cursed husbands, of frog-prince comparative kissing, of aliens and whatever they are up to, of unnecessarily attractive robotic vampires, of being sold a yarn in a spacers' bar – they are all here to sate this need. We wouldn't be fully human, with all aspects thereof included, without them.
Anyone in possession of a collection by Boston knows how well they can unfetter their imaginations, to leave them colouring between the lines like giddy schoolchildren. White Space is, of course, no exception. Yet, beyond the quotes, I have dedicated little of this review to the specific poems herein. The thing is, if one was to buy this second hand (and it is long out of print by now) then one would have to dig deep into the wallet to do so: The cheaper copies fetch above eighty dollars. In other words, no one is going to read this as their first Boston collection. On the contrary, every reader of this will have to be willing to pay that kind of money or wait attentively in case someone happens to sell it for a more reasonable price. (Thank you to Chris Drumm for being that someone for me.) That demands a certain amount of dedication, more than mere curiosity.
Instead I followed the title of the book. Instead I followed the inspiration I found. Instead I coloured, as is the correct use of White Space.
Want to read
May 5, 2015WHITE SPACE brings together 38 previously uncollected poems, including ten originals, four Rhysling Award nominees, and the 2001 Rhysling Winner (Science Fiction Poetry Association) for the best short poem of the year, "My Wife Returns As She Would Have It," reprinted from Asimov's Science Fiction.
Rhysling Award Winner, Asimov's Reader's Choice Award Nominee
**
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews