Stratofanatic's Emporium

 One of the stranger outcomes of doing research for the anthology is that you find relevant poetry in the craziest  places. For instance, I now know more about Asatru -- a modern religion of Odin worship -- then I ever thought possible. This is thanks to the website Odin's Gift run by a modern pagan woman and poet from Germany, Michaela Macha. The website's a massive collection of pagan-related works and verse that I just stumbled upon a few weeks ago -- I forget how specifically. Well, I emailed Michaela to ask if her site had any specifically alliterative poetry, and she directed me to the following page:  Alliterative Poetry in Old Norse verse meters . Looking through it, I quickly discovered something astounding: a link (broken) to a poem called "Invocation" by Paul Edwin Zimmer. Now, I've found "lost" poetry by Paul before ... namely, the stuff he wrote as "Master Edwin Bersark" for the Society for Creative Anachronism. And I previously k...

Weird. Apparently James Blish, the SF writer, did his Masters thesis on Ezra Pound .... and actually SOLD it to The Sewanee Review for $375. (And that's in 1950 dollars, folks. Converting that into today's terms, that's around $4,111.)** Anyway, I'm going through it .... and finding that it's eminently readable. Here is Blish, tackling the claim that Pound's poetry is contentless (that is, that his manner is his matter): "To which one might respond that only in the universe of literature is it possible to say 'Nobody has yet found the Mississippi, if there is such a river,' years after it has been found and marked plainly on available maps in its proper location. It should not matter -- but it does -- that ten eminent men and forty parrots have said that there is no such place once these maps have been circulated, and other travelers have been there ....." Which all had me chuckling, I have to admit. ("Ten men and forty parrots!") Ov...

You might recall the classical story of Solon of Athens once going to visit Croesus, King of Lydia. Croesus asks Solon to name the happiest man he has ever known, believing that Solon would pick himself, but instead Solon -- being Solon -- picks a random low-born nobody. Surprised, Croesus asks why. In short, Solon replies, "Well, he's dead now, so we can safely judge his life. ... let no man count himself happy until the end." And, indeed, King Croesus's own end ended up being an unhappy one. So I was reminded of this tale while researching some background information for Jere Fleck's magnificent praise poem, a coronation ode for King Aonghais Dubh MacTarbh, a person in the Society for Creative Anachronism beginning his second term as king of the East Kingdom. As you might expect from a praise poem, Fleck speaks quite highly of Aonghais, and he borrows many of the traditional themes and motifs from the skaldic tradition in Old Norse literature.  Being the natural...

Gawd, it's been a month since my last entry .... basically, I've been overwhelmed with busyness, thanks to the end of the semester and working on the anthology. (Oh yes! I now have an advance contract from Fairleigh Dickinson University Press for Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology!) Anyway. I just read Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns . It's one of those poems that gets ultra high praise .... but that I know that I didn't quite, even after multiple readings, and reading a few reviews and commentaries. (Generally, I'm so much better at prose than at verse). But then I read the following short review by John Heath-Stubbs, an accomplished poet: "Like his other poetry it pays the compliment to the reader of not going to meet him half way. [True, dat!] I cannot say that I fully understand the direction of these poems, after more than one reading.” But, still, Heath-Stubbs continues on, saying (somewhat vaguely) that they’r...