A surprisingly good SF poet? Karen Anderson.

Although her husband, Poul Anderson, is by far the better known, I've recently been reading The Unicorn Trade (1984), a mix of poetry and prose co-written by the Andersons, and I've been pleasantly surprised by how good a poet Karen is. Initially, I went into the volume hoping to discover more alliterative poetry of the sort that Poul often translation from Old Norse sagas and such forth. Alas, Karen is hardly an experimental in form; lots of rhymed syllabic verse, sonnets, haiku, and the like. But she certainly creates some quite clever & striking images.

For example, take the following sonnet, Conjunction (Venus and Jupiter, Februrary 1975)

How pale is Venus in the lingering light
When sun is set, but day is not yet done;
While in the thronging lights of middle night
Great Jupiter has splendor matched by none.

But watch them now, as in the western sky
Along the paths for them aforetime set
He night by night strides lower, she more high,
Until the stars of Power and Love are met.

Behold as night around them darkens, how
Queen Venus' glroy overmasters Jove,
Nor doubt the truth of what we witness now
On earth below as in the skies above:
For as each subject to the king must bow
So even kings must bow them down to Love.

Now, isn't that just nice?

Or how about this one, The Sky of Space (especially lovely lines highlighted):

No more a crystal sphere with nailed-up stars,
Nor floor of Heaven, but a stranger thing
And fitting words have not been made to bring
Praise to old wonders' new-born avatars.
This is no site of grand Miltonian wars,
No trophy hall of myth where beast and king
Act out the lays that Homer's kinsmen sing
In Attika or Danmark, Hind or Fars.
Yet even when with new-coined phrase we trace
Those shapes of splendor that equations fill--
Or when some Rhysling sees what now we miss--
Even then will the balladry of space
Resound with Old Olympian echoes still
And ghost-gods walk in each Ephemeris.

So space is made to seem magnificent through math and science ("Those shapes of splendor that equations fill") but, even so, there is a continuity between the future and the past, the age of cosmic exploration and the age of mythic wonder.

Indeed, the whole of The Unicorn Trade might be seen as a tribute to the glory and the wonder of the space race -- some of the most poignant work comes in the middle, when the Andersons mourn the deaths of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger chaffee on January 27, 1967, or their powerful co-written short story tribute to Willie Ley, the astronaut who was killed only a month prior before his first space flight. Their poetic tribute, written with Tim Courtney, is as follows:

Planh on the Death of Willy Ley: June 23, 1969.

Only a month before the dream comes true
That all his life was shaped to, and his labor,
Death unannounced as lightning from the blue
Has struck his hand from the cup about to brim.
If nought exists but what we touch and see,
Nor hells nor heavens there where the pulsars quaver,
Of a god unreal we ask what cannot be:
Grant afterlife. Just for a month. For him.

He built his rockets while the zeppelins flew
And worked as many years as Moses wandered
To teach the promise of a world still new,
A shining land not barred by seraphim,
A shore that we may touch as well as see
Where in a month men will at last have landed.
We wish what we cannot believe: that we
Live past our death. Just for a month. For him.

Now the moon waxes broad above that crew
Who will, as next the sun lights Alphonse Crater,
Send back a month too late the Pisgah view
He earned so well, missed by a span so slim,
Of what he taught us they would touch and see.
Might he but watch the skies of their equator,
Our lungfish in the sea Tranquility--
Might a heaven be! Just for a month. For him.

Other poems are happier, but all are touched by wonder, all marveling at science and enchantment: "The Unicorn Trade," "Look up," "Think of a Man," "Cosmic Concepts." Karen Anderson may be well-known to those intimate with the old speculative fiction fan community, but she's new to me, and I certainly dig her.