NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
THE 2007 RHYSLING ANTHOLOGY
edited by Drew Morse
Science Fiction Poetry Association
PO Box 4846
Covina
CA 91723
USA
ISBN 13 978 0 8095 7219 9
$12.95
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This page last updated: 10th December 2007. 		THE 2007 RHYSLING ANTHOLOGY

Every year, since 1978, the SFPA has produced an anthology of the best science fiction/ fantasy/ horror/ speculative poetry published in the previous year, and nominated as such by their members. The members then vote on the poems in the anthology in two categories: Best Short Poem (1 - 49 lines) and Best Long Poem (over 50 lines).

This anthology is well up to the standard set by previous editions: imaginations are set to full throttle. Mike Allen says, in MANIFEST DESTINY:

	Let's play a game of chicken with the Universe.
	Let's extend our suburbs to the quasar edge.
and Jennifer Crow explained what happened WHEN WE SENT OUR POEMS INTO SPACE:
	no-one suspected the malevolence
	of sonnets, the fierce wrath of the cinquain
	or the dervish soul of free 
	though given the sudden reversals
	and dodges of haiku, perhaps we should have
All poetry is poetry of the imagination, but the poems in this and other Rhysling anthologies take a step further than most, sometimes literally into the void, as in James S Dorr's THE EDGE OF THE WORLD:
	the hull bucks, our ship cants — two men go over
	shrieking in blackness — as, far below, our rudder grips aether,
	our keel lifts, groaning, above the ocean's fall.
Humour and parody are frequent visitors to pages such as these. Wallace Stevens gets a gentle kicking in Lawrence Schimel's THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACK HOLE:
	XII

	What goes up, must come down:
	what goes in, must come out.
and G O Clark takes on Dick and Jane (and wins) in SPOT IN SPACE:
	See Spot
	in free fall now, nauseous
	and sweat-drenched from head to tail
In SLEEPERS by Samantha Henderson, a cryogenically suspended fleet of sixty ships sets out on a doomed mission, the passengers all being criminals or those suffering from terminal illnesses. The final survivor, revived by aliens, is given a bottle of virus and
learns of the atrocities humanity has committed in the last 500 years
and allowed to choose the fate of the human race:
By the time anyone thinks to quarantine Saturn Prime, of course it is too late.
It is well worth joining the SFPA just to get anthologies such as this, each year.

reviewer: John Francis Haines.