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Troubles in SF Poetry—Part III

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[Last week in Part II of “Troubles in SF Poetry,” I discussed poems by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff and Math Jones. Here in Part III, we now discuss Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman series for how it incorporates alliterative poetry into a science-fictional setting.] Click here to see Part I or Part II of "Troubles in SF Poetry." Kirstein is one of those hidden gems of a writer who has flown, as sometimes happens, unfortunately, under the radar. For myself, I discovered her thanks to Paul Deane, but in addition to the alliterative verse in Kirstein’s Steerswoman series (1989-2004), she also published with Del Rey Books … a major second research interest of mine. What to say about Del Rey? Well, if you – like me – grew up reading fantasy in the 1980s or 1990s, chances are that more than a few Del Rey titles lined your home bookshelves. These books were everywhere. Del Rey published big-name SF authors like Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov, not to mention Alan Dean Foster’s ghostwr
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Troubles in SF Poetry—Part II

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[ Last week in Part I of “Troubles in SF Poetry,” I discussed a poem by Poul Anderson and how he resolved the issue of creating a science-fictional context for a poem in an alliterative meter. Here in Part II, we now discuss Marcie Lynn Tentchoff’s “The Song of the Dragon-Prowed Ships,” with a brief excursion into a few lines from Math Jones’s “Lenctenlong.”] Click here to see  Part I  or  Part III  of "Troubles in SF Poetry." While researching Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival, when I first encountered “The Song of the Dragon-Prowed Ships,” I instantly knew that here was one of the most throat-catchingly good SF poems yet to appear in an alliterative meter. Tentchoff herself is hardly new to verse-craft. Back in 2000, her long Arthurian poem, Surrendering the Blade , won Canada’s prestigious Aurora Award, but her love for all things Norse goes back even further. She’d grown up reading Poul Anderson, for instance, but at Simon Fraser University she a
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I've Gone Viral (Judy-Lynn del Rey Edition)

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Well well well! So, it seems that my article on Judy-Lynn del Rey for The Conversation , " The woman who revolutionized the fantasy genre is finally getting her due ," has now climbed to over 150,000+ (EDIT: now 250,000+) pageviews ... which means that I've now "gone viral," as the kids say. I'd originally written the article almost spur of the moment, realizing that the PBS documentary on which I served as a research consultant, " Judy-Lynn del Rey: The Galaxy Gal ," was going to premiere on October 1st. So I wanted to create some publicity for that , and just happened to know about The Conversation .  I've gotten a lot of extremely positive feedback about the article, too, and it's all very bemusing, especially for someone used to spending months on research articles that might garner one or two dozen readers, tops. Anyway, here's a few random reflections on going viral: Nobody looks at the writer's byline. One friend of mine post
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Against Academic Elitism: On Brian Murphy's History of S&S

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I've been meaning to blog about Brian Murphy's brilliant  Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery for literally two months now .... but life happens. Better late than never, though! Anyway, I can't recommend this excellent book highly enough. Given how greatly S&S has influenced modern non-Tolkienian fantasy, including folks like George R. R. Martin and Glen Cook, it's surprisingly hard to find good discussions of the subgenre. Fantasy literature tends to be marginalized anyway , but S&S is so pulpish -- so full of icky "-isms" -- that, frankly, most fantasy scholars in academia are ideologically ill-equipped to understand why normal or decent people might love this kind of fantasy at all. A ridiculously cool cover. Artist: Tom Barber That's obviously a problem for scholars. If you can't read a literature with sympathy, your critiques of -isms  in that literature will always risk being toothless or superficial. It also means you wo
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Troubles in SF Poetry—Part I

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Click here to see  Part II  or  Part III  of "Troubles in SF Poetry." For this entry, indulge me—I’d like to spend a moment on an alliterative poem that, at first glance, looks entirely humdrum. And at second glance too, in fact. Honestly, it’s a real snoozer of a poem. Still, if you remember, I once devoted a whole entry several months back to Poul Anderson, the second most prolific revivalist (after Tolkien) in the 20 th century. Several poems of his range between interesting and outstanding. Off the top of my head, I can name “Route Song of the Winged Folk,” “Autumn,” and his skaldic translations for the fanzine Amra . Nonetheless, if you picked any random poem by Anderson, I doubt most people would be impressed. One such “filler” poem is “The Scothan Queen.” This eight-liner appears in loose dróttkvætt meter, and it originated in a short story for the January 1951 issue of Planet Stories , “Tiger by the Tail,” the inaugural Dominic Flandry entry in Anderson’s Technic
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My reviews for WOOFUS TAKES and THE BEALLSVILLE CALENDAR

In my ongoing efforts to support alliterative poets in the Modern Alliterative Revival, I just added online reviews for two more poets: Michael Helsem (aka, "Graywyvern") and Jeff Sypeck. These are below, but if you 'd like to support the revivalist, click on the reviews below and "upvote" them ... it's very handy for the algorithms! Lancelot Schaubert ( The Greenwood Poet ): my  Amazon review  and my  Goodreads review  . Adam Bolivar ( Ballads for the Witching Hour ): my  Amazon review  and my  Goodreads review  . Amit Majmudar ( Dothead ): my  Amazon review  and my  Goodreads review Mary Thaler ( Ulfhidr ): my  Amazon review  and my  Goodreads review Zach Weinersmith ( Bea Wolf ): my  Amazon review  and this  Goodreads review Now for Helsem and Sypeck!
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"Tolkien Criticism Today, Revisited"

It's official: my first review for the Los Angeles Review of Books has just appeared. It's called " Tolkien Criticism Today, Revisited " (click link), and it tackles two recent books on Tolkien: The Literary Role of History in the Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien by Nicholas Birns (Routledge, 2024) Representing Middle-earth: Tolkien, Form, and Ideology by Robert T. Tally Jr. (McFarland, 2024) I'm a bit nervous about it, honestly, not only because it's such a public forum, but because I share my honest thoughts about the current state of Tolkien criticism. If you're interested, check it out ... and always happy to discuss.
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