Revisiting the Prologue: Reconstruction in Poetry and Prose

 Isaac Asimov wrote a history of the children of the Neanderthals—of

one in particular, brought forward to our own time. Read his 1958
short story "The Ugly Little Boy" and then discuss with your team: if
you were rewriting this story in 2024, with what we now know
about Neanderthals, would you describe the boy differently? And,
if it were up to you, would you choose to keep him in the
present or to send him back to his own era?
 By the mid-1850s, the British were able to use computers to help them
dominate the globe. The 19th century world that William Gibson and
Bruce Sterling reconstruct in their novel The Difference Engine (read
an except here) is one that that never happened, but maybe could have
—had the scientist Charles Babbage successfully invented a
mechanical computer in 1824. Computers then helped the British
invent steam-powered everything, from cars to tanks to airships—thus
the term steampunk for all works set in a more advanced 19th century.
Read a bit more about steampunk, then discuss with your team:
how do you think people even further back in the past in the past
would have chosen to use modern technology? How would people
today react if suddenly they only had access to 19th century
technology? Before punching out, be sure to find out who the narrator
of the novel turns out to be.
 Across a tapestry of over a dozen novels, the Canadian writer Guy
Gavriel Kay has built a past almost like our own, but just a bit more
fantastical. It also has an extra moon. His method: to respect the
beliefs of the people who lived in any given era. "If I write about a
time inspired by the Tang Dynasty and they believed in ghosts, I will
have ghosts in the book," he says. "If I write about Celts and Anglo-
Saxons and Vikings in the time when they believed there were fairies
in the woods, I will have fairies in the woods." His hope is that it
allows us to see the past through the eyes of those who lived in it.
Read this excerpt from his most recent work, All the Seas of the
World, then check out the interview here. Pay special attention to his
answer eight minutes in—on his efforts "to tell the stories of people
whose stories tended not to be told". Discuss with your team: how
different are the roles of an historian and of a writer of historical
 fiction? Can the latter help fill in gaps left by the former—and, if
so, should they?
 For the set of poems (and one poetic speech) below, consider how
each goes about reconstructing something—or someone—from the
past. Which feel the widest in their scope, which the most personal in
purpose? Discuss with your team: when is poetry the best medium
for looking backward—and can poets ever be trusted as historical
sources?
o "A Dog Has Died" | Pablo Neruda
o "Dodo" | Henry Carlile vs. "The Dodo" | Hilaire Beloc
o "Brazilian Telephone" | Miriam Greenberg
o "The Municipal Gallery Revisited" | W.B. Yeats
o "On Shakespeare" | John Milton
o "At the Tomb of Napoleon" | Robert G. Ingersoll
o "Kyoto" | Basho
o "A Brief History of Toa Payoh" | Koh Buck Song
o "Kubla Khan" | Samuel Taylor Coleridge
o "The Czar's Last Christmas Letter" | Norman Dubie