NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

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This page last updated: 14th December 2007. 		Star*Line Vol.27 #2

This, the Journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association is a basically produced pamphlet-style poetry magazine with a stated editorial bias in terms of subject matter. The strange thing is that only one of the poems — Bruce Boston's OUR ROBOT PRESIDENT: THE FIRST HUNDRED DAYS — really conformed to my preconceived idea of what a science fiction poem might look like:

	Paints the White House gunmetal gray.
	Appoints R2-D2 Secretary of State.
	Makes it a Federal Offense
	to kick a vending machine.
	Launches a campaign to change
	Old Glory from stars and stripes
	to microchips and wires.
	Declares WD-40 a National Treasure.
	Names a computer program
	United States Poet Laureate.
	Forces Congress to sit bolt upright.
This sharp little poem works as satire, as well as science fiction. Other poems in this issue, such as Marc Pietrzykowski's excellent THE TYRANNY OF THE FIRMAMENT and Sonya Taaffe's INTERCOURSE are also well written and very engaging; but it's not at all clear to me how they are, in any meaningful sense, science fiction poems: from INTERCOURSE
	This art that
	sailors taught to sirens:
	how to hold fast, release,
	over and in one motion,
	remembrance concise as
	a pearl in its ebb; how
	to sing, and sing again,
	though it is your heart
	breaking on the sand.
A few of the poems are not so well achieved, though. G.O. Clark's potentially interesting two-pager THE SMILE is marred by some awkard phrasing in its opening stanza:
	A giant smile has
	been blocking clear viewing
	from the local observatory
	each night of late.
Surely the second line would have been better rewritten as simply "blocked the view"? It is the sort of minor flaw which could easily have been fixed by a visit to a decent workshop or writers' group. And it's a pity it wasn't, because in poems as in aeroplanes no flaw is minor. Being mostly well made sometimes means it still fails to take off.

The final eight pages are taken up with statements by candidates for various positions — President, Treasure etc —in the Science Fiction Poetry Association. No doubt this is of great importance to those involved. But its relevence to the rest of us is questionable. This issue of STAR*LINE includes just eleven poems; some of them, as I've said, very good. It's a pity the extra space wasn't used to include a few more.

reviewer: Kevin Higgins.