The 2018 Rhysling Anthology: The Best Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Poetry of 2017 Selected by the Science Fiction Poetry Association

Rhysling Anthology

by Linda D. Addison (Editor), Holly Walrath (Contributor), Sara Tantlinger (Contributor)

Genres: Poetry, Fantasy, Anthologies, Science Fiction

230 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2018

About the author

Linda D. Addison was born in Philadelphia in 1952. She is the oldest of nine children and received a bachelor of science in mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University. She is the author of three collections: “Being Full of Light, Insubstantial”, “Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes” and “Animated Objects” (Space & Time Books). Her work has also appeared in numerous publications, including Essence magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine and Doorways magazine,.

In 2001, Addison was the first African-American to win the HWA's Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in poetry for “Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes”. Other prominent recipients of this distinguished award include authors, Alice Sebold (Lovely Bones) and J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter Series).

She was honored with her second Bram Stoker Award for her third collection of poems titled “Being Full of Light, Insubstantial” (Space & Time Books).

She is the only author with fiction in three landmark anthologies that celebrate African-Americans speculative writers: the award-winning anthology Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction (Warner Aspect), Dark Dreams (Kensington), and Dark Thirst (Pocket Book).

Her work has made frequent appearances over the years on the honorable mention list for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and Year’s Best Science-Fiction.

Reviews

[Mary Soon Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This anthology contains the 150 poems nominated for the 2018 Rhysling Award for the best speculative poetry. As per usual, it provides a good insight into the great variety of SF/F/H poetry being published. And there is indeed a great deal of variety, in length, style, topic, tone. This year's anthology reminded me that I rarely (but not never) like horror, and indeed I found reading some of the horror poems quite unpleasant. This is not necessarily a defect in the poems, since I think several were intended to be nasty. It also reminded me that the border between speculative poetry and mainstream poetry is ill-defined, and, by my yardstick, several poems that I liked crossed over into mainstream territory.

The poems are divided into those under 50 lines and those over 50 lines. Of those in the shorter category, I especially liked the following entries (in alphabetical order of author surname): F. J. Bergmann's "Gramarye," a poem that is strange, disturbing, and beautifully worded. Jenny Blackford's "Pleiades," which is sweet and lovely in its simplicity. Sara Cleto's "How to Grieve: A Primer for Witches," which speaks powerfully of grief, but from an unusual perspective. John W. Sexton's "The Talking River," which is somewhat cryptic but magical, and which uses rhyme without it appearing forced.

Of the longer poems, my favorite entries, again in alphabetical order by author: "The Patron Saint of Lost Causes," by Chris Castro-Rappl, about a saint almost as lost as those who pray to him. "For Preserves," by Cassandra Rose Clarke, a poem that treats its implausible premise with seriousness, and thereby captures something large and sad. "Hot," by Cislyn Smith, an unconventional and thoroughly entertaining dragon poem. "The Hawthorn Muses," by Shannon Connor Winward, a poem narrated by a tree entwined with a wizard whom I took to be Merlin.

Those were my very favorites, but I also very much liked poems by G. O. Clark, John Philip Johnson, Troy Jollimore, Bronwyn Lovell, Marion D. Moore, Abhishek Sengupta, and Mary Turzillo.

[Timons Esaias · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those cases where the star rating doesn't reflect either the importance or the utility of the work being rated. I will be advising my students (should they be inclined to SF Poetry) to buy it and read it, cover to cover. It is a healthy sampling of the varieties of poetry that flourish under that umbrella, and a good register of what to aim for, if you choose to write it. It is also the voting anthology for a prize I'm proud to have once come in third place for.

I gave Tennyson's Enoch Arden and Other Poems two stars earlier this year, and this was essentially the same reading experience for me, with my aesthetic, so it would be dishonest to give this anthology more.

I read the collection in two passes, as a result of the voting deadline (which was extended a week this year, or I'd never have had time to vote at all). In the first pass I read all of the short poems, and at least the first 20 lines of the long poems. (For voting purposes, if I'm not engaged by the first 20 lines of a poem, it doesn't deserve to be a winner.) I did read many of the long poems to the end in this first pass, but I probably saved myself 80 pages or more by following this procedure in the voting stage. Then, after the deadline pressure was off, I returned to read the remaining long poems in full.

In the voting pass I selected the following short poems for further evaluation:
"The Dead Boy Teaches Me about Godzilla" Lana Hechtman Ayers
"Gramarye" F.J. Bermann
"Supper with the Sphynx" (which is quite cute) Carolyn Clink
"Hubble's Constant" Marian D. Moore
"Apologies from the Moon" Lynne Sargent
"Dead Bride Philosophy" Sara Tantlinger
"End-Times Tables" Margarita Tenser

For the long poem category I culled:
"Commentary Track" Troy Jollimore
"Daunted" Mary Soon Lee
"The Secret Life of a Toaster" Mary Soon Lee
"In the Labyrinth" Allan Rozinski

And, of course, there were at least an equal number of poems that I quite enjoyed, but which I would not have chosen as award-winning. Not only are there good pieces in the anthology, it bubbles with cleverness throughout. How can one not be gently amused by Cislyn Smith's opening lines?--

The dragon orders an iced caramel mocha,
tapping her foot impatiently
while she waits in line.
After a too-long pause,
she gives a fake name to the gum-chewing barista--
true names are powerful,
and they'd just spell it wrong anyway--

Now to explain my low rating overall. It seems clear to me that the overwhelming influence on most of the poems is Edgar Allan Poe. Close behind him as models are Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Byron. While I admire all three of these as poets, I enjoy rather less of their work than I admire and respect. The artificial language (which I often experience as a "vocabulary dump"), gets tedious quickly, unless the content is distracting me from it. [And, yes, I frequently flaunt vocabulary myself, so charges of hypocrisy might be laid.]

I note, for instance, three uses of the word "visage" in the anthology; a word I have used just once in my own poetry, in an exaggerated poem about human faces. There is a LOT of Georgian and Victorian vocabulary. Or should I say plethora? A not-so-elegant sufficiency? Certainly a surfeit.

Rhyme for the purpose of rhyme wears thin on me. As do vampires and werewolves, most of the time. The cumulative result is that reading the collection cover to cover got to be a real slog, and I couldn't do it quickly. But I would NOT make a claim that the poems are unworthy; only that my aesthetic is a lot narrower than the collected tastes of the SF/F/H universe. I have noted that reviews of this volume often contain little to no overlap with my list of favorites; and that in past years it has not been uncommon for the entire list of winners and also-rans to contain not a single title that I even considered voting for.

Finally, it should be noted that word-play is strong in this one.

[Beth Cato]

Not a review. Includes two of my nominated poems.

[Richard Magahiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it is a pretty good representation of the state of poetry in the speculative realm these days. It felt a little to me like there were more strictly fantasy poems in the anthology ten years ago but I don't have any actual numbers to back that notion up. As always, my preference is clearly tilted toward the "short" entrants (50 lines or fewer, along with a few prose poems), although the very very short end of the spectrum has its own annual collection put out by the SFPA called Dwarf Stars. To me, it's just a little hard to sustain the effort it takes to read or write one of the really long, often multi-part, works and still end up with a deep experience.
I read this fast, close to the voting deadline, and didn't end up with a sense that there was any single standout poem that resonated with me. There were some that I bounced off of quickly, either on account of the subject or the poetics, but to me that's just a matter of the personal nature of the genre.

[Richard Leis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few of these poems are five-star speculative poems, but several did not appeal to me, especially those with lots of adjectives, mythology, and/or werewolves (I still do not get speculative poets' apparent obsession with werewolves, a creature I did not have any strong feelings against until I started reading speculative poetry.)

Neil Gaiman's "The Mushroom Hunters" was my personal favorite in the collection, along with Mary Soon Lee's "Advice to a Six-Year-Old" and all her other poems, Linda D. Addison's "Sycorax's Daughters Unveiled" (despite what I said about mythology above), Cislyn Smith's "Hot", and Shannon Connor Winward's "The Raven's Hallowe'en."

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m in this

[R. Gene Turchin]

Amazingly good poems and one of mine, "Quantum Sox" is in this edition