Sandra Kasturi's sf poetry
My friend Sandra Kasturi is an award-winning science fiction poet, and she's just published her first major poetry collection. The book features an introduction by Neil Gaiman, and many of Sandra's major works. I'm not a huge poetry guy, but I make an exception for these poems. Be sure to check out the online samples.
Link,The Unbinding of Spirits
What frail spectres can we begin to conceive
out of darkened bedrooms and glass-blown pride?
Conjuring tongues and gin-chilled fingers relieve
us of our private hauntings, turn them inside
out upon the carpet. Can we not inspire
peace—not this hag-ridden, ghost-hackled perturb
of an existence? Give one thought to what dire
sorrows may come forth, what we may disturb?
Yet here is grief. I have been waylaid.
I am gone to frantic clutching, a raving
of words, braiSitting, steadying the tilting world; smoking, obscuring the truthsding together things unsaid,
things imagined. Mourning’s bright weaving.
From my drowning bed, dragged by tides’ rebound,
my spectral words, pulled to depths where they unsound.
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When I read this in June, I thought--here's a promising Shakespearean sonnet (with a vagrant phrase pasted into line 11) that hews to all conventions except meter. Only five of the lines had the correct # of syllables. So, I edited it, mostly by replacing two syllable words with one syllable words and pruning prepositions. Still, it has sort of a metrical denseness caused by the use of dactylic compound adjectives and feminine rhymes:
What frail specters can we start to conceive
From darkened bedrooms and glass-blown pride?
The charming tongues and gin-chilled hands relieve
Us of our private hauntings, turned inside-
Out upon on the rugs. Can we not inspire
Peace—not this hag-ridden, ghost-hackled tomb
Of dailiness? Just think about what dire
Sorrows may come forth, what we might exhume.
Yet here is grief, and I have been waylaid.
I’m gone to frantic clutching, a raving
Of words, braiding together things unsaid
And things imagined. Mourning’s bright weaving.
From my drowning bed, dragged by tides’ rebound,
My spectral words, pulled down where they unsound.