The Science Fiction Poetry Handbook

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

(FAQ)

1. "The way you take everything apart and analyze it seems very strange to me. Doesn't all that analysis destroy poetry? Shouldn't it be spontaneous?"

   You know how there are musicians — often very good musicians — who play only by ear, can't read music, and proudly announce that they've "never had a lesson"? This is what the question makes me think of. We can only wonder what sort of music Bach would have written if he had done it all spontaneously, without any formal training. It might have been splendid music, but it would have been very different.

   I believe that the more poets know — know consciously — about what they're doing, the more likely they are to write splendid poems rather than just pleasant and adequate poems. I think that when they break the rules of language it's better if they know what rules they're breaking. And I think poetry is strong enough to survive careful analysis.

   Every now and then the world is going to be blessed with someone for whom splendid poetry (or splendid music) just comes naturally, with no training needed. Most of us, however, will be better poets for having learned our craft.

2. "On page 41 you say that 'unpleasant' has only two morphemes — 'un' and 'pleasant'; you say that 'pleasant' is both a morpheme and a word. Are you sure that's right? It doesn't look right to me. Consider words like 'abundant' and 'important' and 'defiant'. I think there's an 'ant' morpheme, myself."

   And you are absolutely right. "Unpleasant" has three morphemes, and one of them is the adjective-forming suffix "-ant." There's some sort of law of the universe that says "When you make an inexcusable mistake in writing a book it will always be in a prominent location." I couldn't have done this more glaringly — the error is right in the middle of my attempt to define the morpheme. It might as well be in bright red type. I apologize for the error, for which there truly is no excuse. A correct example would be "unkind," which really does have only two morphemes.

3. "Why on earth do we need a separate genre called 'science fiction poetry'? What's the point?"

   For the same reason that we need a separate genre called "cowboy poetry." There is a community of science fiction readers, and those in the community who love poetry want to read poetry written in that genre.

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