A Timely Prompt

Yesterday I finished work on an essay about speculative poetry, and what women writers might be bringing to the form. At one point in it I wondered if I might be granting women poets privileged status when I encountered their works——or if those women writers did write a poetry that could be distinguished from that written by men.

The essay never arrived at an answer to this question of mine——for it took its shape, in large part, from memories of and notes about two different panel discussions about women's speculative poetry, in 2008 and 2013; and those memories and notes led me in a different direction.

This morning I read a blog posting by Julie Crisp, editorial director at Tor UK, entitled "Sexism in Genre Publishing: A Publisher's Perspective." Her notes reminded me of a thought that has crept into my mind, now and then through the years: that, yes, in my years editing speculative poetry magazines in the 1970s, '80s and '90s I did give poetry submissions from women a different level of attention——because fewer such submissions came in, compared to the number from men.

You may well call this sexist: for women poets stood at an advantage even before I opened the submissions envelope.

Crisp, I should note, professionally judges submissions on the basis of intrinsic manuscript quality. The great value in her posting lies in the fact that her editorial team actually counted numbers of manuscripts from women and men writers, over a period of months. Their findings echo what other genre editors have noted anecdotally.

Essays by their nature seem to leave some matters unresolved: for sometimes we fail to see all the issues involved until we have written out our thoughts and revised them repeatedly to a state of finished completion.

Doors must shut before you can reopen them.

In any case, Crisp's notes brought back to mind old thoughts ... a timely prompt, from an unexpected direction.

Cheers ...

Bloomsday in Baraboo

At the Bloomsday observance last year in Baraboo, Wisconsin, I sat and listened to two of the relay-race readers who would hand off Ulysses to one another —— on the hour, hour after hour, on that middle-June Sunday when Martha and Sammy and I were set up at the Baraboo Sunday market ... a day that was part of our season-long challenge to ourselves to see if we could keep bringing our antiquated stuff to a flea market —— a relatively genteel and easy-going and agreeable one —— week after week, May to October.

I watched these readers mostly from afar: for we occupied a space on the Baraboo Square opposite Annie Randall's Village Booksmith, where the Joycean celebratory readings have taken place on Bloomsdays since 2004.

This, the routine: a reader would sit down and declaim (or aim to declaim) Joyce's text, while sitting at a wooden chair at a table on a busy street in front of that comfortable and inviting bookstore ... reading Joyce's words to the air.

A friend or listener might occupy another chair at that small table, or might not. The readers, with a dedication to performance that I understood and hope that they all did, too, kept at their readings whether a listener sat there or not —— perhaps not even aware if ears might be hovering nearby, since the tangling and jumping and riverrunning words these readers needed to translate into lip, tongue and throat motions must have required more of their attentions than they would have exercised on a typical lazy and summery June-weekend afternoon.

Last year, Wisconsin dragged its feet through a drought while vacationers reveled in unbroken vacation-friendly weather; and in Baraboo that Sunday for the background and sometimes foreground of these readings came car-engine commentaries, oblivious passerby idle-but-loud conversations, and even, while I was sitting in a listener's chair, the thrumming-down flatulences of massed motorcycles nearing the nearby intersection, going br-r-r-r-oom instead of Bl-l-l-l-loom. Drowned sounds of Joyce, and the waves of noise that industry has made an unpleasant permanence in our lives ... and passing chit-chat ... and the running-through, too, of the internal monolog even a dedicated listener must listen to, within herself or himself ...

Really a rather nice experience of the Charles Ives sort.

Music. Environmentally enhanced.

Last year I would happily have volunteered for a reader's slot, had we lived nearer by. We live an hour and a half away from Baraboo, by state and county highways, however —— and in Baraboo I was an unknown quantity. Through the course of being there on the square, Sunday after Sunday, however, we gained some sense of that small city and its community —— artistic and antiquish, both —— and so when Annie two weeks ago stood in our booth describing the upcoming Bloomsday plans, I volunteered. The whole event will fall in our "working hours" in Baraboo: for the reading of the whole of Ulysses will begin at 2 p.m. Sunday and end at 3 p.m., the latter hour being the one when the Sunday Market ends. So Martha will oversee our booth for that last hour —— not quite alone, since Sammy will be there —— while I babble to the air.

... and all in one hour. In past years, Annie has overseen a thirty-six-hour marathon of readings. This year, she oversees thirty-six readers who will be reading simultaneously at locations around the downtown square. Annie told me she expects to cut up a copy of the book ... which made me think I may well be starting in the middle of a sentence ... appropriately enough ...

And will all thirty-six begin in the middle of sentences, at once?

Whatever the situation, I will be one of the thirty-six, with my station tentatively being on the square itself, by the cannon beneath the white pines near our usual Sunday Market space ... and come what may, be it rain or tourist apathy or hecklers enlivened into buffoonery by visits to the clown museum, I will read my allotted text and feel during it what I feel now —— honored to have the chance to take a small part.

I have read Ulysses —— albeit only once all the way through —— and had I lived in Baraboo I would have enjoyed undertaking a marathon as listener, following along, book in hand, through every hour of that reading that I could attend. What an experience that would be! Does anyone do this, at any of the Bloomsday events? In the hour or so that I listened, last year, I sat there wishing I knew what page to find, in the book there at the table, in order to follow along.

Being the reader at such an event offers a more intense experience than being the listener, however: for the reader performs and listens at the same time.

A symbolic hour of simultaneity! —- for an Irish Symbolist who still seems an enduring presence.

I will be there; and I feel sure that many others, whether they know it or not, will be there, this year or next, partaking in an ongoing festival of words that have the capacity to grow into life, even when spoken only to air.

Cheers ...

Correction for NYRSF Chan Davis Essay-Review

Because of the political nature of much of Dan Davis's writing, I took pains over the wording of my essay-review about It Walks in Beauty: Selected Prose of Chandler Davis, edited by Josh Lukin. My essay has just appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction (25:9, whole number 297, May 2013, pp. 1, 4-6) —– and unfortunately near the beginning it contains a sentence that makes me sound a touch out of touch.

While I favor there being a bit of nonsense in my writing I would rather put it there myself, accidentally or otherwise.

A well-meaning editorial change has created this sentence: "After the Red Scare, Davis cut short his career at University of Michigan, opting to leave the United States and reestablish himself in Canada."

What I wrote is this: "Davis, after the Red Scare cut short his career at University of Michigan, opted to leave the United States and reestablish himself in Canada."

I am politically unsavvy in many ways —— but not in such a way that I think Chan Davis enjoyed any choice about his Michigan career ending. Fortunately, later in the essay I mention that Davis received summons and jail time: so persevering readers may think I am not as much a cluckbrain as I appear to be, at first ... or perhaps more of one.

Perhaps I chose too positive a word in "opted." Resuming his academic career in the U.S. had closed, as an option. Unpleasant circumstances and the purging of the liberal element from U.S. higher education forced him to "opt."

Would Davis have remained bitter about the University of Michigan's failure to apologize for its actions, had it indeed been the case that "Davis cut short his (own) career" ... ?

Cheers ...

Wiscon, Sexism, SFWA ... and Speculative Fiction and Speculative Poetry

The new furor over at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America creates sympathetic reverberations here, far away —— even though I am a man and the issue relates to depictions of women, and moreover not currently a member of SFWA. The furor reverberates here all the same. In recent years I have liked SFWA mainly for its membership directory. I had no money for membership in recent years, though, thanks to the C.M. Kornbluth biographical work; and so I thought I would just fade away. It remained in mind that if I could overcome the pennyweight writing doldrums then I might send in my overdue dues. SFWA kept sending me the relatively useless Bulletin —— probably, too, thinking that I might make good eventually, since I have done so in other lean years ... although its hopes must have been tinted with practical sense, since it never sent its directory.

It strikes me as perhaps strange, perhaps inevitable, that the current controversy should have near its center the forever-droning-on SFWA Bulletin palaver between one senior writer who has lived on the fat of Sciencefictionland and another who has gotten by on the lean —— a sort of Winnie-the-Pooh and Eeyore duo. Despite the sometimes useful discussions that arise in their pages the somnolent monotony prevails —— especially since the latter figure, with faraway dooms hidden behind his deep-lidded eyes, keeps genuflecting to the worldly success and knowledge of the former. That latter writer provides the more literary interest, while the former offers a vision of the beneficent behemoth that science fiction is, to the uppermost half-percent of its writers.

Perhaps strange, perhaps inevitable —— because one of their conversations had made me ask myself, "Do I care any more if I belong to this group?" How could I? Mike Resnick intoned about C.M. Kornbluth, and mentioned two books —— The Futurians and The Way the Future Was, and not mine, that I daresay has more to say about Kornbluth than any other book yet in existence. In response, Barry Malzberg said nothing.

This left me with bitterness flourishing like black rot on the tongue. Malzberg had read my book and praised it highly —- to me. Not to the world, apparently.

If, when in command of the SFWA membership's attention, the one writer who might have mentioned my book knowledgeably was failing to do so, for whatever reason, why should I want to stay in the organization?

At Wiscon two weekends ago, Mary Rickert asked me if anyone had spoken up for me, during that absurd episode when the author of The Way the Future Was identified me with "the forces of evil."

"No," I answered.

The other day I read several blog postings concerning the current furor, including one by Ann Aguirre, whose work I do not know. Aguirre's statements of cold-shouldering and public snubbing by established male science fiction writers astonished me. I had thought that the goons and gropers had been shooed away, by and large, and that the imbecile high priests to masculine writerly prowess had learned the tape-to-lips trick to look smarter. Not so, apparently. Yet on reflection how could I have known? The convention that I have attended the most, and to which I feel most allegiance, is Wiscon —— statedly feminist, and in practice egalitarian in attitude toward those who exhibit their own egalitarian spirit.

Many social problems of the sexist and racist sorts, I suspect, would begin disappearing if we would simply do this: erase "science fiction" from a convention's name and pencil in "speculative fiction." In doing so we would be harkening back to the split between the marketing category and the literary category, which I speak about in Kornbluth. Likely only a few science fiction conventions could make this shift, however. The one that I think could do it almost without effort is Wiscon. The serious, thoughtful fiction discussed in its panels and encouraged by its system of rewards and awards would fit more naturally beneath the literary banner than under the marketing one. If Judy Merril when she was guest of honor had revived her old campaign and had urged that the convention adopt the literary term "speculative fiction" and had tapped into the same energy and spunk with which Karen Fowler and Pat Murphy announced the Tiptree Award years ago, what might then have unfolded?

The great acceptance speculative poetry has enjoyed —— as a term, as a focus for panels —— at recent Wiscons offers evidence for a group mindset that might accept the change. The energy at this Wiscon 37 in this direction surprised me. Friday evening featured a lively panel, "Women's Speculative Poetry Now," with Lesley Wheeler, Amal El-Mohtar, Shira Lipkin and Sophia Samatar. The next afternoon brought "Open Secrets: A Speculative Poetry Reading," featuring "members of the Secret Poetry Cabal (a speculative poetry group)" —— a likewise lively affair with multiple poets and a large, appreciative audience. The last reading I attended at Wiscon, moreover, included Wheeler reading from her new Aqueduct Press book whose title poem (to bring matters back around to my original subject) deals with sexual harassment. (Timmi Duchamp of Aqueduct bemoans the fact that she took no notes during Friday's panel. I went prepared to do so, though —— and hope to describe that event in greater detail. Wheeler's book I came home with, and hope to dip into further.)

In the meantime, try the sound of this: "Wiscon: World's Leading Feminist Speculative Fiction Convention." Would such a name lose any attendees? Would it gain any? Would it further deter the "science fiction" sorts Aguirre encountered?

For me, I may hold out for a Speculative Writers organization to join, someday, and forget about that senile-fogey "Science Fiction" group. Blish and Knight should have known better, way back when —— no? And I should have stuck to my youthful guns, too, and persisted against the marketing tide and clutched "speculative fiction" even closer to my heart than I did.

(The subtitle of my Kornbluth biography, which was suggested by McFarland, by the way, remains fine: for "science fiction" remains the accurate term for the period 1939-58.)

Cheers ...

Farewell to Jack Vance

I never knew him —— although after our one or two phone conversations I began to feel as though I did, at least a little: and at this moment I can hear his voice in my ear, genial and gentle and unassuming. As has happened for me with other souls who identify themselves as political conservatives we made our links to one another via the arts —— plural —— one being science fiction, another being music. Or maybe I should say we made a link to one another through memory: his memory, personal and direct; mine, impersonal and research-based and indirect. We cared enough about the same things that our exchanges came easily.

On January 6, 2009, Jack told me, "I'm blind. My eyes went out fifteen years ago. I've acclimated myself to the situation. It seems almost normal." His contact with literary culture continued —— for he had a "reader" —— I assume an automatic device: "I've got a reader that reads cassettes to me from the Library of Congress." At the time, poetry occupied a fair share of his time, for in his queue he had the Oxford Book of English Verse and Oxford Book of Children's Verse. Should my eyes dim while my ears remain a-quiver, I could ask for no better companions for quiet afternoon or evening hours.

I doubt he could have done in prose what he did, without the influence of traditional poetry.

At the time of our conversation I jotted down those titles without too much thought.

Where does Vance stand in science fiction? I wish I knew better. He was doing a great deal of writing and publishing in years when I read relatively little in the genre. His earlier books, insofar as I know them, include distinctive, idiosyncratic and complex works that I have enjoyed and respected and look forward to revisiting. What emerges most powerfully from them, in memory, is the Vanceian color —- the strangeness, the posed artificiality that inhabits and infects his characters and situations, tingeing them with an impalpable edginess that threatens to blur into discomfort but often leaves an aftertaste of pleasure.

Cheers ...

Dejah Thoris and Others

In recent years I have hoped some feminist student of science fiction would discover a fruitful area of study being opened within my Kornbluth biography's pages, and take off running. That not having occurred——to my knowledge——I have taken matters into my own hands. I will be taking a feminist revisionary look at Kornbluth in a talk this weekend at Wiscon, the feminist science fiction gathering in Madison.

Interestingly, one of the guests of honor, Jo Walton, wrote recently about The Space Merchants in a manner that indicates she remains unaware of the arguments in my book.

Ignorance of my book bothers me not at all. The failure of its information and ideas to penetrate the science fiction field, however, does.

I believe anyone who becomes familiar with the facts will come to regard The Space Merchants as an embarrassment. It reduces women to nothings, and distorts readers' understandings of Kornbluth's own egalitarian approach to his life and his work.

... And why do I call this entry "Dejah Thoris and Others"—–? I will also read at Wiscon a story upcoming in an Aqueduct Press anthology ... a story that reveals what Burroughs never said about his Princess of Mars.

Cheers ...

Glimpses of a Fruitless Future

Even though spring wines have worked out for us more often than some late-season wines, I may forgo them this year——being busy with writing, with antiquing——and with fretting over the step I want to take with the spring dandelion blossoms and rhubarb stalks. I want to use them in wines sweetened only with grapes, either by the traditional method of using raisins or the contemporary method of buying the must——pairing dandelion with white grapes, and rhubarb with white or red.

I may yet talk myself into starting anew along this line of experimenting——yet still must face the questions: can I afford to take the time this year, when I am trying to make good on some greatly overdue project deadlines; and can I afford organic must——especially during spring auction season?

Yesterday morning, not too early but early enough that the air was cool and lacked the humidity it would take on later in the day, Martha and I were standing by our young Cortland apple, admiring its blooms——and seeing not a single ground bee at the blossoms. The sun shined; the night had been cool, not cold. Even the sand cherry, with its abundant smaller white blooms, attracted no notice except our own.

I feel it is one thing for agribusiness, monocropping and factory farming to take away our honey bees, and quite another for it to take away native bees. The first act represents an assault against civilization and tradition: for apiculture and Western culture have come down to us over the centuries and perhaps millennia hand-in-hand. The second represents an assault against the native North American ecosystem, which has been struggling against pressures created by the human communal lifestyle for fifteen thousand years or more but especially since the 18th century.

The vineyard where I worked for a time is as much a suspect in the local area's bee problems as are the much larger corn and soybean monocroppers.

The owner of that vineyard rarely praised an organic grower. I recall him doing so just once, one morning when he spoke admiringly of an organic corn field. What pleased him, in other words, was this farm's example of factory-style monocropping, which it practiced even if certified for its adherence to organic-farming methods.

On the other hand, the owner of that vineyard seized any opportunity that arose to ridicule or criticize organic growers, especially small ones——always, of course, in his affable, nicest-guy-around manner.

Monsanto herbicide made up part of the vineyard's arsenal. I could have examined the containers for the fungicides and pesticides being used, but never did, closely——not that I would have recognized the neonicotinoids on the ingredients lists.

The vineyard owner used other toxins and poisons in the vineyard, too. One day when our Scottiedog was there with Martha and I, Lorna began throwing up, repeatedly——an incident that may have helped cause or hasten the digestive-system problem that killed her before we had finished our time with the vineyard.

Neonicotinoids rank high among suspects in the collapse of bee populations——a problem that made itself more severely felt this last winter than in previous ones. Yesterday, in doing some reading on the issue, I learned that wine grapes number among the crops that typically, in agrifactory anti-culture practice, receive neonicotinoids.

I will drink the wine that I have remaining from the vineyard, which I made. One case of it, in fact, I made from organically raised grapes from a different farm. From this time forward, however, I will be feeling qualms about wine grapes lacking organic certification. I have known since the 1980s that table grapes are one food above all to eat only if grown organically: but the attractions of wine and wine-making made this knowledge about vineyard practices recede from my thoughts, for quite a while.

Later yesterday I went into the backyard again and did see native bees, although not in a profusion——and I even saw a probable honey bee. After our morning visit to the garden, which had scared us with its lack of bee action, at this warmer hour I felt a bit reassured——although not inclined to alter the thoughts that had growing in my mind during the morning.

Just now in the front yard I looked at the blooms on our youngest apple, a Wealthy. Sunshine, breeze, sixty-nine degrees, eleven a.m. Nary an insect about. Around the tree, in the lawn: beautiful bright dandelion blooms, perfect for picking.

And beeless.

Cheers ...