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Calenture

Volume II: Number III ISSN: 1833-4822


_____________________________________________________________________ Articles Interviews Poems Asenath and Leucothea: Female figures from the sea in modern literary fiction Pino Blasone Georgina, from AustralianReader.com Green Serene Lilies and Lamia Change of Address The Imperfections of Infinity The Interstellar Dancer Beyond Ultima Thule On the North Sea Zerstrer Boneman The Beginning of the End Karin Peagram Phillip A. Ellis J. J. Steinfeld J. J. Steinfeld J. J. Steinfeld Pino Blasone Christopher Hivner Christopher Hivner Christopher Hivner Christopher Hivner Phillip A. Ellis Don't Run The Tiger of Darkness Nimue Enigmatics Reviews Approaching the Speculative Kenneth Brown William C. Burns, Jr. William C. Burns, Jr. C. D. Whateley Phillip A. Ellis

May 2007

This Fabulous Shadow only the Sea Keeps

Asenath and Leucothea: Female figures from the sea in modern literary fiction "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown" is a popular saying of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. If we listen to Ezra Pound, "'All is within us', purgatory and hell." These two premises drive us to presume the most ravishing and worrying dimension of the unknown is our unconscious. Usually, it likes to speak by dint of symbols. Similar to a wide mirror reflecting the unconscious, the sea--to a greater extent the ocean--has not seldom been regarded as a receptacle of supernatural forces and weird beings. They may be godlike or devilish, sometimes friendly, more often hostile. In the fiction written in English last century, that is the case with some tales by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, especially The Thing on the Doorstep and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Innsmouth is a fictional seaport on American North Atlantic coast. Monstrous aliens coming from oceanic depths try to invade and colonize it, by assuming the shape of its inhabitants or setting odd relations with some of them and taking the place of others, thanks to their magic powers: "There had been traffick with things from the sea--it was horrible." (Lovecraft Doorstep). Such horrible "things", that they can be scarcely described or even named. Nevertheless, in The Shadow Over Innsmouth the author gives us a diffuse description of them, full with repulsion for their hybrid or "amphibious" nature. In The Thing on the Doorstep there is one of them, which assumes human look and name. Moreover, she becomes the most remarkable of the few female characters in Lovecraft's narrative production. Her name is Asenath Waite: "She professed to be able to raise thunderstorms, though her seeming success was generally laid to some uncanny knack at prediction. All animals markedly disliked her, and she could make any dog howl by certain motions of her right hand. There were times when she displayed snatches of knowledge and language very singular--and very shocking--for a young girl; when she would frighten her schoolmates with leers and winks of an inexplicable kind, and would seem to extract an obscene zestful irony from her present situation. Most unusual, though, were the well-attested cases of her influence over other persons. She was, beyond question, a genuine hypnotist. Her crowning rage, however, was that she was not a man; since she believed a male brain had certain unique and far-reaching cosmic powers". *** Probably, the name Asenath was suggested by a biblical antecedent (Genesis 41:45, 41:50, 46:20). Anyhow, this modern sorceress shows striking marine peculiarities. From a psychological point of view we may dare to notice that she is a sort of inverted character, if compared with the better known and realistic Ellida, main part in the drama The Lady From The Sea by Henrik Ibsen. She is drawn to dry land, as a base from where to reach "cosmic powers" in a masculine stable way.

Which feeling of the sea are we dealing with? Lovecraft's poetry production is not lacking in poems as Unda or Oceanus (1915 and 1918), that denote both attraction and aversion to such fluid element. Oceanic horror expressed in some of the narrative works by the English writer William Hope Hodgson was a near literary precedent, much appreciated by Lovecraft himself. We are even informed about a loathing of our author, for all seafood. Yet let us turn back to a very young Lovecraft. When he was just a boy, he issued a short paraphrase of Odyssey, titled "The New Odyssey or Ulyssiad for the Young". This is its exordium: The night was darke! O readers, hark! And see Ulysses' fleet! From trumpets sound back homeward bound He hopes his spouse to greet. Long hath he fought, put Troy to naught And levelled down its wall. But Neptune's wrath obstructs his path And into snares he falls. After a storme that did much harme He comes upon an isle The, here emphasized, wrath of Neptune--the old sea god--represents that of sea itself, with its terrible storms and fatal accidents. But let us read forward, where the future story-writer focuses on the figure of Circe, the ancient sorceress: He now remains in fair domains, In Circe's palace grand His men do change in fashion strange To beasts at her command. But Mercury did set him free From witcheries like this. Unhappy he his men to see Engaged in swinish bliss, He drew his sword and spake harsh word To Circe standing there. 'My men set free,' in wrath quote he 'Thy damage quick repair!'

Then all the herd at her brief word Became like men once more. Her magic boat, she gives all treat Within her palace door There is some resemblance in attitudes and behaviours between Asenath and Circe, though the context of the latter is not very original and obviously nave (Odyssey's paraphrase would have been issued in 1897; The Thing on the Doorstep was written in 1933, issued in 1937!). Tendency to seize humans, in order to change and use them for their ends, is alike as to both characters. The conclusion of the tale is far more pessimistic, than that of the episode, abstract from Odyssey. Yet the impression of an affinity gets confirmed, if we go on reading physical description that Lovecraft makes of Asenath Waite Derby. She is the bastard daughter of an occultist lived in Innsmouth, whose biblical name is Ephraim, and of a mysterious woman, supposed immigrant from the unfathomed deep. Asenath is depicted with conventional Mediterranean features, such as they can be also imagined of a Homeric Circe: "She was dark, smallish, and very good-looking except for overprotuberant eyes; but something in her expression alienated extremely sensitive people. It was, however, largely her origin and conversation which caused average folk to avoid her. She was one of the Innsmouth Waites, and dark legends have clustered for generations about crumbling, halfdeserted Innsmouth and its people". *** A different sense and outlook of the sea can be found in The Cantos, by Ezra Pound. Such an enthusiasm is transparent through the here following verses, firstly included in the Canto VIII as issued in 1922, then replaced with other ones in the edition of 1923: The weeping Muse Mourns Homer, Mourns the days of long song, Mourns for the breath of the singers, Winds stretching out, seas pulling to eastward, Heaving breath of the oarsmen, triremes under Cyprus, The long course of the seas, The words woven in wind-wrack, salt spray over voices

If Lovecraft's Asenath may be considered as a Dark Lady from the sea (fated to come to a bad end, anyway), in The Cantos we bump into another female character rising from the waves, but foreboding a positive value. Asenath's look has something fishy or "amphibious", although she differs from the traditional image of a mermaid. Instead this Homeric--and Ovid's, and Propertius'-Leucothea adopted by Pound was able to transform herself into a seagull, free to fly through air or diving into water, rarely resting on the surface. In Greek, Leucothea, otherwise named Leucothoe or Ino, means "White Goddess". Such a colour is suitable for her benign task, to succour seamen in danger and to rescue shipwrecked sailors. In the Odyssey, book V, Leucothea rescued Ulysses in peril to be wrecked with his raft, by giving him her magic veil as a girdle; it enabled him to swim harmless to Scheria, isle of the Phaeacians. This episode is recalled and transfigured so often in The Cantos (XCI, XCIII, XCV, XCVI, XCVIII), as to gain a symbolic weight in Pound's unfinished work, where the poet identifies himself with Odysseus. A nice detail is that the "diva" of Pound, presumably under her transparent veil, wears a modern bikini! Yet what in the masterpiece of the American poet was recurrent became central in the prose-poems by Cesare Pavese, Italian poet and novelist, rooted in a Mediterranean imagery and collected with the title Dialoghi con Leuc in 1947. Leuc is none but Leucothea. She is the chief interlocutrix, in these speculative and updated dialogues. In part at least, Lovecraft's Asenath/Circe originated from an alien race. On the contrary, according to a Grecian myth Leucothea had been a human being once. Daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, she incurred a tragic lot, at last throwing herself down amid breakers from a high cliff. Gods had so profound pity on the young woman, as to promote her marine nymph or even sea goddess. In Pavese's dialogue The Witches, it happens some a confrontation and reconcilement between Leucothea and Circe, the White Goddess and the "Dark Lady" of the sea. Then we may discover they are like two faces of one coin, that is an universal ticklish equilibrium. Men and women are at the mercy of a consequent destiny, out of full control beyond any illusion. Rather than with "a clumsy Gothic fashion" (Lovecraft), we have to do with the Greek idea of "phantastikon" (Pound), aiming at transcendental intuition. Perception of the sea emerging in the dialogue Sea Foam is Mediterranean, intermediate between those of Lovecraft and Pound (this is a field where conservative Lovecraft and progressive Pavese, pro-fascist Pound and anti-fascist Pavese, could meet). It concerns the life as fruit of a perennial strife between love and death, Eros and Thanatos: "This sea is full of islands and it was on the most easterly of them, Cyprus, that Aphrodite the wave-born came to land. It was a sea that knew many tragic stories. Ariadne, Phaedra, Andromache, Helle, Scylla, Io, Cassandra, Medea--who does not remember their names? They all passed that way and some of them stayed there. Those waters, one might say, were drenched in sperm and tears". In the same dialogue, a perplexed question is asked by the Greek suicidal poetess

Sappho, to the Cretan nymph Britomart: "It's boring here, Britomart, the sea is boring. You've been here for ages, aren't you sick of it?". Essential references de Camp, L. Sprague, Lovecraft: A Biography, Doubleday, Garden City (NY) 1975. Lovecraft, H. P., The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, edited by S. T. Joshi, Penguin Books, London and New York 1999. ----, Ulysses or the Odyssey in plain old English verse (or else, The New Odyssey or Ulyssiad for the Young), introduced by Ken Ichigawa <http://www.kobek.com/ulysses.pdf> Pavese, Cesare, Dialogues with Leuc, translated by William Arrowsmith and D. S. Carne-Ross, Eridanos Press, Boston 1989. Pound, Ezra, The Cantos, New Directions, New York 1995. ----, Canti postumi, edited by Massimo Bacigalupo, A. Mondadori, Milan (IT) 2002. Pino Blasone

An interview with Georgina from AustralianReader.com Calenture: Not every one of my readers will be familiar with AustralianReader.com. In short, what is it, and what does it hope to achieve? Georgina: AustralianReader.com is a web site that constantly publishes new works by emerging authors and independent presses in Australia. Basically, the site was developed to try to promote new Australian writing. At the time it was launched, there was no online showcase for Australia's emerging writers, and we remain committed to the idea that there should be such a site. Calenture: As you say, AustralianReader.com was developed to try to promote new Australian writing. To what extent was this one of the reasons to focus on work produced in the year just prior to publication? Georgina: That was one of the key reasons why we restricted the scope of publication to works produced within the last year. We have, on a couple of occasions, published older works without realising, but as the slogan or tagline for the site is "wet ink for hungry minds", we really do try to present the works as they're created -- while the ink's still damp on the page! Calenture: How did you come to decide upon the online format that it would take? Georgina: It was actually a group effort -- I was working at a web development company at the time, and a few friends of mine were helping with the practical aspects of the site -- development, design, and so on. We all had a hand in defining how the site would work for users. That said, I had in mind a number of other sites I liked and visited regularly at the time, and, for instance, our decision to run a continual publishing schedule, which I think was unique to AustralianReader.com among the independent Australian writing publications at the time, was a product of my researching other sites and formats online. Calenture: If I may ask, what are some of these sites that have helped influence the development of AustralianReader.com? Georgina: Many of them are no longer online, but among the key influences were sites like Serial Text, which focused on publishing serialised fiction, and After Dinner, which was a mixed-genre site that allowed authors to have their writing "workshopped" with other contributing authors before it appeared on the site. I also really enjoyed Opium Magazine <http://www.opiummagazine.com/, which I feel publishes great, entertaining writing. Calenture: The emphasis upon Australian literature is not unique to you alone. How important is it to demonstrate the range of Australian literatures and, at the same time, to avoid a sense of parochialism in the material accepted? To what degree do considerations of excellence, of worth, override the geopolitical basis of selection? Georgina: Well, quality comes first. The Australian aspect really provides a background or couch for the site, rather than being a focus. The works are the focus, and as the idea is to promote great Australian writing both in Australia and overseas, the quality of the works we publish is our most important consideration. Of course, it's important for us to publish across as many genres as we can, and often that leads us to publish works that, for instance, I, personally, might not particularly enjoy. But the ultimate question of quality -- is the piece well-written? does it "work"? is it self-contained and complete? -- can be answered whether I like the submission or not! I'd have to say that avoiding a sense of parochialism in the writing we publish doesn't really weigh heavily on my mind as I consider submissions. The variety of submissions I receive is just

enormous, and as the writers all have varied histories, writing styles, and personalities, I usually find myself amazed at the different voices and styles of writing, rather than being faced with the same styles, or the same themes, over and over again. Calenture: Approximately, how many submissions do you receive in a given period? Georgina: On average, I'd estimate that we'd receive 5 to 7 submissions a week. Calenture: And to what extent is the diversity of voices and styles symptomatic of the vitality and health of the Australian writing scene? Georgina: I'd say it's symptomatic to a large extent! I think that our contributors are representative of Australia's emerging authors as a group, and their work certainly indicates that the scene is in great health! Calenture: This leads me to ask how far there is a dialectic between personal likes and dislikes, and more impersonal judgements of a work's worth? To what degree are the criteria for selection personal, and to what degree impersonal? Georgina: Well, it's tricky -- particularly with a thing like reading for pleasure, because your preferences are so personal, and so unavoidable. But obviously it's the editor's job to set criteria that they believe identify "good" or "worthy" works, and to assess submissions on that basis -- not their own personal preferences. At AustralianReader.com, the criteria for selection are as objective as they can possibly be. Some are basic -- for instance, we won't accept content that contains typos, because we don't have the resources (or the inclination!) to edit works, so they need to be polished and print-ready when we get them. Others -- like whether or not a story "succeeds" -- can be less easily definable. But they've all been established as the result of research and experience, and of course, they're continually being refined. Calenture: Non-Australians may be unfamiliar with the term "cultural cringe." How do you avoid this, in presenting Australian literature to the world via the world wide web? To what extent does your success with non-Australian audiences help define and delineate your purposes for publication? Georgina: I think that the way to avoid cultural cringe is to present the best of your culture! To be confident that you're presenting the best, you have to be aware of, and sensitive to, what's going on in other countries. You have to research similar operations in other places, to read non-Australian, established, and popular authors, as well as those writers who are just getting their names out there ... "competing" and "non-competing" projects, if you like. You have to be confident to stand up and say "this project stacks up", and I think we can say that about AustralianReader.com. Any hints of success with non-Australian audiences are rewarding, because we're trying to get emerging Australian writers out there both as individuals, but also, on some level, as a sort of movement, and to think that that movement has appeal to people in other locations is great. But I wouldn't say this defines our purpose for publication. We have two goals for publication: to get the writing into the public space, and to get the readers to continue to come back. Where those readers originate from is really a secondary issue for us. Calenture: Given that the Australia Council helps provide funding for artistic ventures, like AustralianReader.com, and that they require statistics of readership and the like, how important are these "nuts and bolts" aspects of the site to you? To what degree do the statistics become important in validating your work?

Georgina: Well, we've never applied for funding, so the nuts and bolts aren't important from that point of view. But the statistics are hugely validating for me, as editor, and for our authors. I provide authors with a periodic report on the key points of the statistics so that they also hopefully have a chance to share that sense of validation, if that's their thing. Calenture: Now, Calenture is particularly focussed upon speculative verse. How interested are you in this? How amenable is AustralianReader.com to speculative verse? Georgina: Phillip, AustralianReader.com is amenable to anything! The site was developed in a way that allows us to add new categories or genres as we please. The reason for this was that we wanted to be flexible -- for the site to be shaped by the submissions we received, not restricted to only accepting certain types of writing. We wanted to be able to accept any work -- any writing at all -that we felt was interesting and successful as a piece of writing. And we have an experimental fiction section, so I see no reason why we'd not be amenable to a speculative verse section! At the moment the only snag -- hopefully a minor one -- is that the system that holds and presents the works on the site ignores multiple spaces. We can justify or center words on the page, but we can have problems were layout is concerned -- our system won't tolerate work that's irregularly spaced on the page. Line breaks are no problem; it's just multiple spaces. There are ways around this issue, and we're happy to look into these if the layout becomes critical. So far, though, authors have been fine with the way their works are displayed on the site. Calenture: What do you see as the place of the fantastic in contemporary Australian verse? Georgina: Well, unfortunately I'm no authority on speculative verse, but it seems that this, like other genres of poetry, could do with expanded coverage. Speaking purely from the point of view of a reader, I think the Web is a great way to promote poetry, particularly to readers who don't know much about it. I also believe that many of the readers who come to a site like ours are looking for an escape -- they're on their lunch breaks or they have a few minutes before their next appointment, and they want to "check out" for a while. In many cases, the more fantastic the works -- the more extraordinary and unexpected -- the more enjoyable these readers find them. I certainly feel there's room for -- and an audience that appreciates -- the fantastic, be it in verse or prose, or even on film. Imagination lives! (and not just in the minds of writers) Calenture: There is an anthology of Australian speculative poetry in the works; it is being compiled as we speak: what is the role of anthologies in promoting verse, particularly speculative verse, and what are the chances of anthologies of material from AustralianReader.com? Georgina: As a reader, I love writing anthologies, and I've found them a great way to access new poets and get an idea of what's out there, so I feel that they have a very strong role in promoting verse. In the promotion of speculative verse -- which, by its very nature (and name!) strives to ignore the perceived "boundaries" and present something completely new -- something unexpected -- I feel that anthologies must have a critical role in terms of exposing poets to readers, and readers to the range and diversity of speculative verse. Calenture: And you also empower the reader too, enabling them to vote on works' quality. How did you develop this feature, and how popular has it been? Georgina: Well, the author's greatest desire is to reach readers. Not "reach" as in "be seen by" but "reach" as in "reach out to" -- authors want to touch people, to make them stop and think about or feel something that they wouldn't have experienced if they hadn't read the author's work. Knowing this, I knew that the site had to have feedback mechanisms, so we integrated a space for each author to promote their own works, web site, and provide contact details, and provided the little reader

feedback section that appears at the bottom of each published work. I suppose the options in that feedback mechanism are slightly unorthodox, but I knew that readers can be hesitant to be critical if they feel their criticisms are too harsh, and with good reason sometimes, because budding authors can be set back if they take criticisms to heart. Our feedback form tries to take personalities and egos out of the equation, and provide a sort of level playing field on which readers can give -- and authors receive -- feedback that, while limited, serves to give the author an overall idea of how the readers enjoyed his or her work. The feedback feature is of varying popularity -- some works receive many "votes"; others receive few -- but after a few weeks on the site most works accumulate a number of votes that provide some indication of the readers' feelings about the work. Calenture: Further, you have the ability to allow readers to contact poets, to leave comments on their works. Again, how popular has this feature been? Georgina: It's probably more popular with poetry than with any other format, for the simple reason that many poems are shorter than stories and other works we publish, so readers are more likely to notice the feedback form and have time to think about what kind of rating they'll give. Calenture: What would you like to see more of in AustralianReader.com? Georgina: I'd like to expand our offering to take in more genres of writing -- more emerging genres. I'd like us to expand our coverage take in more of the "fringe" or non-mainstream writing. We have an established stable of writers who write in the more mainstream genres and are, fortunately, pleased to contribute regularly. This year, we'd like to be able to expand our range in the less common genres. Calenture: Finally, I wish you every success with the site, and I hope that you do well. What are your plans for the future? Georgina: At the moment we're closely focused on building our promotion of new publications by emerging writers away from AustralianReader.com. We've been working to develop the strategies we use to promote books, collections, and so on, and we'd like also to support authors who have articles, essays, and so on published in periodicals. They're the areas we're really focussed on this year.

Green Serene I gazed at the amazing labryinth, as high as the sky, transcendent. My friends were entranced as we danced within its towering walls. As if heaven sent, serenity fell in depths of shimmering grass. This way and that, turning until tummies were quietly churning. A sunny day, a liquid blue centre, as calm as a fine sheet of glass, called for our impending arrival. Concealing screams of survival, our maze of seeming tranquility gained another sweet victory. Glimmering hues around the pool. Yet black in its ultimate grimace of a culminating whirling dervish. Karin Peagram

Lilies and Lamia Lilies and lamia alone move my heart sated by ennui and no dream save the thought death will arrive-dissolution-fated decay's resolution. Phillip A. Ellis

Change of Address Howd you get on that other planet? You have leaden feet and a nervousness about flight. Not quite fitting the textbook definition of acrophobia but close enough collector of prisons lover of confinement now youre dwelling far away in spaces immense as desperation sending cryptic messages to government agencies and complete strangers who have little time for space travellers. Tell me, do they have poetry and esoteric dreams and long, leisurely nights where you now dwell? Tell me, are you ever returning or have you staked your claim adjusted at long last? J. J. Steinfeld

The Imperfections of Infinity lunatics like scientists running full speed past and present imagining legendary weapons only scientists can conceive scientists coming up with cures scientists coming up with sweeteners for the tongue for the mind for posterity who will write poems to mushroom clouds cloudy perfection lunatics in lab coats decontamination chambers for the soul isolation wards for the spirit surely, and this is an unscientific thought, a handful of scientists are sitting in the afterlife no need to say Heaven or Hell, eschatological precision is imprecise writing beautiful poems about mushroom clouds and the imperfections of infinity J. J. Steinfeld

The Interstellar Dancer After you came to this planet it took you a mere three years to learn a dozen of its languages fluent as deception and camouflage nuances, subtleties, connotations and denotations and you were a whiz at accents and oratory four years to master diligence and industriousness so perfectly that you got two promotions at your first job women liked you the way you spoke, dressed, could flex your thoughts and muscles and a dancer, incomparable, you married well twenty-five times at last count missing husbands all over the country a decade of experimentation and matrimony not once did anyone speculate that you were from farther away than most imaginations could measure then one of your wives saw you and a co-worker you had humiliated which one fired a gun first is unclear but the iridescent puddle that replaced you wont make the history or science books such is the disillusionment of our senses and dreams that could not prepare us for your fancy dancing. J. J. Steinfeld

Beyond Ultima Thule When I got nearly old-aged I left my mild town Trebisonda and travelled northward, as far as the Hyperborean land, in search of the last dragon on earth. I crossed the sea, sailed up and down the stream of rivers and met many kinds of people, civilized or barbarian. Each of them had own their custom, each one trusted their beliefs. They speak strange languages, as many as I deem not spoken even round the tower of Babel. Then that cold shore to which snow-white swans fly in summer was looming up before me, such that I did hasten to reach it, ferried with my horse by a boat on the waves of a sea's sound. Near the coast there was a hill, with a dark building on its top. Black crows flew all around it. Entering the castle, I put hand to my sword. A gentle fair lady was the castellan of the manor. "I studied in a good college", she said, "So I may speak your language, you know, just a bit". "My name is Morgana, what is yours?" "Some called me Saint... But please call me George only, it is far better". I told about my quest, the venture of a life. She smiled, showing me a mirror where I saw the dragon at last. It was sleeping inside its cave, looking innocent like a big cat, with the Holy Grail in its claws. Its den was hidden by woody ruins, sure a wreckage of pagan worship. "Where is this place?", I asked. "Beyond Thule, it is a long way". "I will leave early, tomorrow". Frosted meadows start blooming, flights of swans begin to land. Each swan gleams like a sword, the flowers sparkle like fires

and I feel too tired to go further. So many morrows have glided on, since I left no more. Morgana says the Grail is well watched by the beast, for now at least. Maybe she is right. Yet, today, she has told me: "Together, we might give rise to a golden age: my ancient art, your new faith". "Why not" I have replied, with some improvised play on words, "We might call it Middle Age!" Pino Blasone

On the North Sea On gray-eyed eve when spines of icy moonlight pierce my side the angels lose their halos to the voice of last rites. Riding steeds of Nokkvi over deep and angry seas fierce and angry gods spare no one. Sailing to lost lands divining a map for a myth navigating a man for a petty secret. Cast the bones angel of death a lick of marrow for a shiver of good fortune. Christopher Hivner

Zerstrer Katydid's cries pierce the night. What did they see rising from the dirt, a gnarled fist thrust in the air challenging the moon and cursing the stars. Eyes filled with blood, blind to the honeysuckle air. Harvest hands thrash for purchase staining the horizon with disease, the belly trembles with a roar that shatters the night silence with a creak of a broken jaw bone. The mouth opens releasing the wasps. The hum devours everything as they swarm. They continue to fly from his throat feeding off of his venom. People are dying, animals are dying, as the wasps cover the earth. Although blind to see our suffering, his hearing is perfect and our howls of agony play like a symphony. Christopher Hivner

Boneman Dressed as darkness, walking with a limp to evoke sympathy from the neighborhood mothers, I stroll down the road with a glint in my eye, calling out, in my avuncular voice. They run to my side bringing the skulls for my collection. I gather the precious gifts in my arms, the screams of the children still hanging in the air. Christopher Hivner

The Beginning of the End Seeing the skeleton of everything, finding only the soul that drives the gloom. Seeing the deep abyss that burns my eyes and eviscerates all hope. I am the Demon's messenger. Dwelling in the air you breathe, feasting on mortal blood, hear my lustful cry. You will be mine before the end of light so the Demon can walk alone. Rivers run through my veins, mountains form beneath my skin, light sears my eyes, and death preys in my bowels. I am creation and destruction, profundity and absurdity, flesh and blood, the beginning of the end. Christopher Hivner

This Fabulous Shadow only the Sea Keeps A hundred thousand miles away from oceans my forebears had sailed, I shall emerge from my iron-white capsule. And, over the skin of my fragile craft, I shall work, repairing the many strikes of dust, rock and iron alike. And I shall, alike the mariners of those ancient days, pore over my vessel as it sails the winds of a fading sun onwards, and into a limitless ocean of stars, astrolabe, sextant, quadrant ready for use. And I shall be the shadow of all those before, and thus shall I voyage a hundred thousand miles away. Phillip A. Ellis

Don't Run!!! Though it wore no cloak nor carried a scythe Me and Jim both...we knew it was him. To see it in person...an ominous fright. Its eyes close together; a predator like no other we were locked in his sight. Us two; his quarry, awaiting his burst. Me; I was praying...don't go for me first. Terror stricken...my heart quickened My feet were like lead. Jim started to gun it He thought he could outrun it; but the beast won instead. Grim was on his neck quick...Jim's blood running thick. My stomach turning; I thought I would be sick. I was hearing; flesh tearing...I heard his bones break I wasn't sure, how much more I could take. The beast gobbled and slurped...made a sickening burp Grim ate him whole; ate Jim down to his sneakers. I watched Jim lose his soul...lose his soul to the Reaper. Kenneth Brown

The Tiger of Darkness In the Sojourn of this wayward traveler I have known seven Black Holes Known seven hearts that live beyond horizons of the infinite darkness in black holes of Absolute Despair though living is perhaps not the proper phrase And while I may wonder freely the silence between the stars Still I bear the marks of approaching one too closely Perhaps my impaired judgment can be forgiven Because this particular dark star was cloaked in the purest Light And who could have known that all that brightness was the death cry of billions of stars being ripped apart Their starfire hearts bursting dumping their stellar essence in microseconds There she was the Tiger of Darkness hidden in the death glow of Angels I can only marvel at the forces that must have created this creature What kind of past must have collapsed upon her creating this naked singularity of shattered simplicity All the bright spaces of childhood crushed by the compressive forces of gravity I dream of her reaching but never quite touching screaming in the silence of space As she slipped below the still dark waters of her event horizon Perhaps my impaired judgment can be forgiven Because I am often deemed curious Too easily drawn to dark energy sources in uncharted spaces A star gazer too eagerly charmed by siren song Perhaps . . . And so I tell the tale The missing parts of me have become the albatross around my neck I sail the space ways singing the sad song of The Tiger of Darkness hidden in the death glow of Angels William C. Burns, Jr

Nimue Myrddin sleeps in his love for you Somewhere deep somewhere beneath consciousness Twined in the root of this ancient oak and you well know you made it so But hold a moment That sound what is that sound He stirs lady he stirs And is there a rock in this world or any other Big enough to hide you William C. Burns, Jr

Enigmatics Spinning in their spinnakers of velvet dusts And gases spilled with all color-shades of rusts, The vortice voids like radish roses whirl Out to the perimeters of their curl, Out to the steppes where the black waterfalls Cascade endlessly adown tall black walls, To crash somewhere at the foamy bottom Misty question-marks rising to ask But where from ...? And the basalt Pillars of the West Tremble and shudder with that strange zest, That like an earthquake resoundingly comes From the restless, resistless, elder spumes! C. D. Whateley

Approaching the Speculative Lawrence Schimel, Fairy Tales for Writers (New York : A Midsummer Night's Press, 2007) ISBN: 978-0-9794208-0-1 $6.50 US One of the origins of the contemporary genres that make up speculative literature is the fairy tale. From it we gain the fantastic impulse, the impulse towards fantasy that helps dominate our current literature. In contemporary speculative poetry, there is a strong subcurrent of work based upon fairy tales and other folk literature. The equivalent in fiction may be Beauty, a fantasy with some science fiction elements, that is derived solidly from folk literature, among other examples, but something that approaches speculative poetry, yet does not quite arrive, is Lawrence Schimel's Fairy Tales for Writers. Schimel writes, in this chapbook, poems that are simultaneously fairy tales for and of writers. In doing so he eschews the trappings of speculative fiction. What he writes is possible, plausible, and he lacks elements of the fantastic that characterise the field of speculative poetry. Take, for example, his riff on the theme of Snow White: If she must publish with small presses, the dwarves of the industry, that will be fine. Schimel uses metaphors to encompass the more fantastic elements, in Fairy Tales for Writers. And these metaphors lead to the over-riding theme of this collection. Like any other effective chapbook, the poems here are unified. They are unified not only by their take on classic fairy tales, but also by an emphasis on the writing life. Fairy Tales for Writers makes clear this dual focus: these are about and for writers, and so we can imagine, by extension, an applicability to the writing life of the speculative poet. In doing so, the poems of Fairy Tales for Writers work, and they work quite well. But it is one thing to demand that these work well, be good poems, so to speak. It is another to demand that they be good speculative poems. The poems do work well. We can see this in almost any passage that we may abstract, such as, say, the opening quatrain of "Snow White": Perhaps you've met her: the woman who craves so desperately to be the smartest, wittiest, richest, and fairest of them all. The poems work in part by an appeal to our own experiences of the writing community. We can recognise, in this example, the vain sort, just as we recognise others, such as the shy writer in, say, "Cinderella". And we can apply them to our speculative writing communities. But, no matter how far the poem uses the fantastic basics of fairy tales, in talking about the real, the "mundane" world in this way, the poems fail to achieve a speculative resonance. All this is a circuitous way of saying that Fairy Tales for Writers is almost ideal for a Calenture review, but not quite. The only real reason why it has achieved one is that it reminds us that readers of speculative poetry must read more than purely the speculative. It is possible to use themes and motifs of speculative fiction in a way so as to encompass the mundane world outside of the fantastic. A friend of mine reminds me of this fact, in his doctoral thesis (that, by the way, is about fantastic motifs in the work of Strindberg) that he is working on. We must read more than just speculative poetry, and we must be capable of creating a dialogue between the speculative and the

mundane. It is a challenge to us, made both by postmodernity and the demands to eschew formal generic boundaries. Fairy Tales for Writers helps us see that, even as it approaches, but does not quite reach, the mantle of speculative poetry. Phillip A. Ellis

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