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mary_soon_lee's review
The annual Rhysling anthologies contain all the poems nominated for that year's Rhysling Award for the best speculative poetry. The poems are divided into two categories: short (under 50 lines) and long (50+ lines). The anthologies provide excellent snapshots of speculative poetry.
As per usual, the 2022 anthology encompasses a wide variety in tone, form, and subject matter. There's science fiction, fantasy, horror, and some poems that I'd class as non-speculative. There are humorous poems, moving poems, alarming poems, and delightful poems.
Among the 103 poems in the short category, there seemed to be more relatively-hefty poems and fewer poems at the haiku end than I recall in recent years. On my first pass through, I marked 24 poems as particularly strong. It pleased me that half of those 24 poems were by poets who seemed unfamiliar to me. Mind you, my memory is undependable, so I may have previously read poems by some of those poets. I found it comparatively easy to choose my favorite and second-favorite poems, both of which I loved, but I had to work hard to pick a third-favorite poem among the many I liked. [In case anyone is wondering, I have three poems in the anthology, but I never vote for my own work.]
Speaking of hefty poems, several of the 77 long poems were too lengthy to be included in their entirety in the print edition, instead being trimmed to five-page-long excerpts with a web address for the full poem. While I found reading the short poems a pleasure, the long poems were more of a mix for me. I loved one, very much liked another seven, considerably liked another dozen, and didn't care for quite a number. And that's okay -- different poems speak to different readers, and I am glad the anthology is casting a wide net.
As per usual, the 2022 anthology encompasses a wide variety in tone, form, and subject matter. There's science fiction, fantasy, horror, and some poems that I'd class as non-speculative. There are humorous poems, moving poems, alarming poems, and delightful poems.
Among the 103 poems in the short category, there seemed to be more relatively-hefty poems and fewer poems at the haiku end than I recall in recent years. On my first pass through, I marked 24 poems as particularly strong. It pleased me that half of those 24 poems were by poets who seemed unfamiliar to me. Mind you, my memory is undependable, so I may have previously read poems by some of those poets. I found it comparatively easy to choose my favorite and second-favorite poems, both of which I loved, but I had to work hard to pick a third-favorite poem among the many I liked. [In case anyone is wondering, I have three poems in the anthology, but I never vote for my own work.]
Speaking of hefty poems, several of the 77 long poems were too lengthy to be included in their entirety in the print edition, instead being trimmed to five-page-long excerpts with a web address for the full poem. While I found reading the short poems a pleasure, the long poems were more of a mix for me. I loved one, very much liked another seven, considerably liked another dozen, and didn't care for quite a number. And that's okay -- different poems speak to different readers, and I am glad the anthology is casting a wide net.
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