Posts Tagged ‘Bruce Boston’

Published by Poetry Editor on November 30, 2016. This item is listed in Issue 32, Issue 32 Poetry, Poetry

A Grand Guignol Kind of Night

The right kind of night for
a theatre of the dark absurd,
an enchanted evening’s folly
for addict-connoisseurs
of murder most foul.

Shadows were gathering,
in the salon, the greenhouse,
the library of countless shelves,
dread passions soon released
in the night, voices raised
in anger, three screams,
the barking of a dog.

Morning would find
blood in the back garden,
a scimitar discarded
on the study floor,
the stoked remnants
of belladonna dreams
in the sunlit haze
of the unaired rooms.

On the screened porch
the chairs and tables
tossed this way and that,
broken glass and the
residue of spilt drinks
scattered across the tiles.

Bodies would be
trucked to the morgue
in the county meat wagon,
thick with the scents
of death and horror.

By noon of the next day
the slaughter and wreckage
will have streamed away,
furniture properly placed,
dead bodies resurrected,
shifting shadows restored,
prepared for one more
dark enchanted evening
for addict-connoisseurs
of murder most foul.

— Bruce Boston

Bruce Boston is the author of more than fifty books and chapbooks. His writing has received the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov’s Readers Award, a Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling and Grandmaster Awards of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. His latest collection, Resonance Dark and Light, is available from most online booksellers. bruceboston.com

Editor’s Notes: Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol (The Theatre of the Great Puppet was a theatre in the Pigalle area of Paris (1897 -1962) specializing in naturalistic horror shows, often graphic and amoral popular from Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. (See Wikipedia for more discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Guignol

Published by Poetry Editor on February 23, 2016. This item is listed in Issue 29, Issue 29 Poetry, Poetry

Royal Visitation

Her Majesty is startled
awake in the night
by the hands Bruce-Boston_royal-visitation
of a dead lover

exploring her body,
touching her
in ways she had
never known,

the very one
she had assassinated
for his flagrant
and gross infidelities,

the only one
she had ever loved,
as much as she
could love anyone,

his skilled hands
in the night
take possession
of her own.

— Bruce Boston

Bruce Boston is the author of more than fifty books and chapbooks. His writing has received the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov’s Readers Award, a Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling and Grandmaster Awards of the SFPA. His latest collection, Resonance Dark and Light, is available from most online booksellers. www.bruceboston.com

Published by Associate Editor on November 15, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

Septuagenarian Flashback by Bruce Boston

Illustration by Sue Babcock

Stumbling into the humid
jasmine-scented dark
from a midnight cinema
playing an iconic art film 
rife with sidewalk cafes

and laconic actors whose
monochromatic silences
confabulate to a toxic 
conundrum of pale angst
and lost existential loves,

my venerable thoughts 
segue to foggy mornings 
in a metropolis by the bay,
wandering the slantwise
streets of stoned youth

and the fleeing tendrils 
of a Guatemalan high,
a great golden bridge
aglow with the blurred
headlamps of early traffic

rising out of the mist,
glittering like some fabled 
and fantastic behemoth 
that would carry me to 
a chameleon tomorrow.

Bruce Boston is the author of more than fifty books and chapbooks, including the dystopian sf novel The Guardener’s Tale and the psychedelic coming-of-age-novel Stained Glass Rain. His poetry has received the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov’s Readers Award, the Gothic Readers Award, the Balticon Poetry Award, and the Rhysling and Grandmaster Awards of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. His fiction has received a Pushcart Prize, and twice been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award (novel, short story). www.bruceboston.com

Published by Karl Rademacher on July 9, 2014. This item is listed in Interview, Issue 20, Issue 20 Poetry, Main Features

Interview with Bruce Boston

by John C. Mannone

Bruce Boston

Bruce Boston is the author of fifty books and chapbooks, including the novels The Guardener’s Tale and Stained Glass Rain. His writing has appeared in countless publications, most visibly in Asimov’s SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, The Pedestal Magazine, Science Fiction Age, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase. One of the leading genre poets for more than a quarter century, Boston has received the Bram Stoker Award for Poetry Collection, the Asimov’s Readers Award for Poetry, the Rhysling Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and the Grandmaster Award of the SFPA. His fiction has received a Pushcart Prize, twice been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award (novel, short story), and a finalist for the Micro Award (flash fiction).

John: To say you are a prolific writer, as well as being highly accomplished, is an understatement. Click here for a bibliographic summary..

Having read other fine interviews with you, such as John Amen’s in The Pedestal (issue 11, 2002) and Van der Hooft’s in Strange Horizons (June 2007), where you address what speculative poetry is, would you please summarize your thoughts about what it is for our readers who might ask if a speculative poem is just a science fiction or fantasy poem, especially since you helped define the genre?

Bruce: If you are talking absolute categories, the defining characteristic that sets speculative poetry apart from mainstream poetry is that it speculates. Mainstream poetry concerns itself with the everyday world that we inhabit and perceive: personal relationships, observations of people and the city and of nature, social and sometimes political situations, etc. When you encounter an “I” voice in mainstream poetry, it is most often the author of the poem speaking directly to the reader about something in the real world. In contrast, speculative poetry deals more with the imagination: the world as it might be, the nature of reality, why we are here, what the future may hold, the existence of the supernatural, etc. It fashions scenarios of the possible rather than the actual. When you encounter an “I” voice in speculative poetry, it is most often a fictional character speaking, not the poet. Since the real world exists not in terms of absolute categories but of gradations from one category to another, it is not always completely clear whether a poem is speculative or not.

John: I understand that your first passion was fiction. How did you become interested in speculative poetry? And as you write fiction today, what has poetry brought to the table besides the effective use of metaphor and other poetic devices in your fiction.

Bruce: In 1971 I joined a group in Berkeley, California: The Berkeley Poets Cooperative. I already had an interest in poetry from reading poets such as Pound, Eliot, Ginsberg, Poe, and a score of others. And I’d already written some poetry that had been published in Occident, the University of California, Berkeley, literary magazine. Each week the group held an open workshop, so I began writing poems more regularly to contribute to it. My poems were often distinctively different from other in the group. I was writing speculative poetry, though I didn’t yet have at name for it. It was not until the late seventies that I connected with Robert Frazier and his magazine The Anthology of Speculative Poetry, and through Bob the Science Fiction Poetry Association, that I discovered fellow writers who were mining the same imaginative vein that I was in poetry.

Poetry and fiction both employ the medium of language. Anything that enhances one’s language skills is going to enhance both, and seriously practicing the craft of poetry certainly enhances one’s language skills: brevity, the perfect word for the line (or sentence), symbolism, assonance and dissonance, rhythm, flow, etc. I generally read poems aloud at some point while composing them, and for certain passages in fiction, I do the same thing.

John: If there is such a thing as a typical writing day, please share your process with us. If the process is unique each time you write, then could you share the triggers of inspiration?

Bruce: There is no typical writing day unless I am working on something long: a novel, a long story, or a very long poem. Then I write first thing in the morning and try to put in four or five hours at it, sometimes returning to it for another hour or two later in the day. If I am writing shorter poems or flash fictions there is no schedule. I write when the spirit moves me, sometimes not writing for weeks at a time. A thirty-line poem may percolate for days or even months, changing a little and becoming more polished each time I return to it, until I feel it is complete and ready to submit for publication.

John: In a recent and fascinating article posted in The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/05/daily-rituals-creative-minds-mason-currey), Oliver Burkeman reviews the book “Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration And Get To Work” by Mason Currey. We learn six lessons from history’s most creative minds; one of them is the practice of “strategic substance abuse.” I think many of us are familiar with Edgar Allen Poe and his indulgence to alcohol, or Calvin Coleridge, and his to cocaine, when they created some of the finest speculative fiction or poetry in history. And though hardly abusive, I do enjoy a glass or two of dry red wine when I create poetry (or write interviews. LOL). So tell us if your experiences support Currey’s thesis.

Bruce: Very much so, though I think I’d refer to it as “use” rather than “abuse.” I’ve consumed a large quantity and variety of mind-altering substances in my life. When the mind is in an altered state one’s imagination can be stimulated and you are more likely to travel mental byways that lead to ideas and perceptions you would have never experienced otherwise. Thus the ingestion of certain substances can contribute to one’s creativity and imagination, just as your glass or two of wine does for you. However, I believe abuse of such substances is detrimental to both creativity and one’s health. And I don’t write final drafts of either poems or stories in a mind-altered state. That’s where the craft of writing comes in.

John: You close your recent collection, Dark Roads, with “Thirteen Ways of Looking at and through Hashish.” Its clever final lines might elucidate what we’ve talked about in the previous question.

“Tendrils of illumination
Cling to my thoughts,
Trailing in my wake,
Puzzling to those
Whose paths I cross,
Those ever immersed
In the dull endurance
Of their daily tasks,
Without illusions,
Without perception
Of what lies beyond
The stolid borders
Of the everyday,
Insensate and
Unable to travel
In the domains
Of space and time
And consciousness.”

Bruce: Actually, I think the whole twenty-page poem does. But please note that the poem as a whole portrays not only the positive but the negative aspects of mind-altering chemicals.

John: This, of course, is a good segue into your latest collection. I’ve had the pleasure of reading Dark Roads: Selected Long Poems/1971-2012 (Dark Renaissance Press 2013). Thirty one poems span over the 156 pages. Share with us what you’d like your potential readers to know about this fine collection. (And of course, tell us how we can purchase it.)

Bruce: Dark Regions Press published a retrospective collection of my work in 1995 – Sensuous Debris: Selected Poems 1970-1995. Since nearly twenty years had transpired since that book, and more than forty since I began writing speculative poetry, I thought it was time for another retrospective collection covering my entire career as a speculative poet. However, when I began to assemble it I realized that if I included all my own favorites poems along with those readers had single out, I would be looking at a three-hundred-page collection, which seems to me excessive for a book of poetry. Therefore, I first decided to limit the book to long poems, all those fifty lines or over. And next, since I’ve been working more in the horror field than science fiction for the last dozen or so years, I decided to limit it to dark poems.

You can purchase the regular trade paper edition of Dark Roads at Amazon, the signed limited trade paper at Dark Renaissance Books and Dark Regions Press, and the signed, limited hardcover edition at Bad Moon Books, Camelot Books, and Ziesing Books.

John: The illustrations by M. Wayne Miller in Dark Roads are remarkable. Your wife, Marge Simon, is also a notable poet and artist, whose artwork is fascinating, too, and she is quite skilled at ekphrasis—one art form complementing another (a fair way of defining it).

So, in general, how do you collaborate with Marge, and what advice can you give other writers collaborating with their counterparts?

Bruce: Joe Morey at Dark Renaissance Books selected Wayne Miller to illustrate Dark Roads, and I couldn’t have been more pleased, particularly once I saw the work he produced for the book.

Marge and I have collaborated in several different ways and forms. Marge has illustrated several of my collections, which is a kind of collaboration since her art was in response to specific poems. We have also collaborated on cartoons, Marge’s art along with ideas that I came up with or we did together. However, most of our collaborations have been with poetry and flash fiction. This generally happens when Marge is stalled on a piece and I contribute some ideas and lines that get it moving again. Then we pass it back and forth until it feels finished and we are both satisfied with it.

As far as advice for couples or any writers collaborating: 1) If your styles of writing are too disparate, don’t try it; 2) Have a clear idea of what you are trying to accomplish with a particular poem or story, and make sure you agree on it. 3) Never collaborate unless you are both enthusiastic about it.

John: We are delighted to reprint or publish for the first time some of your poems in this issue: “Living in a World Of Giants,” “For Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets” (Asimov’s SF Magazine, April 1984 and 1985 Rhysling Award winner), “Visions of the Blue Clone” (Shades Fantastic, 2006), and “The City and the Stars” (The Pedestal Magazine, 2002). Would you care to give the genesis of each of these poems and/or any interesting anecdote concerning them?

Bruce: Not sure about the genesis of each poem, but I can say something about each:

“Living in a World of Giants” – Modern science, despite it’s many wonderful practical achievements that have given us a living standard superior to kings of a hundred years ago, remains totally impotent regarding one important aspect of our daily lives.

“For Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets” – This one was written thirty years ago, and I don’t remember what prompted it. It’s a mix of science fiction imagery and surreal imagery. The “spacers” of the title can be interpreted literally as far future space travelers, or metaphorically as anyone who has lost their way and is struggling with life’s complications.

Visions-of-the-Blue-Clone_50 “Visions of the Blue Clone” – This is an ekphrastic poem based on my own art. In some early version of Windows there was a free graphics program included called Picture It. I started playing around with it as a recreation, taking photographs and other images and manipulating and changing them. By taking an old photo of Marge, I created the image below. This consequently inspired the poem, which portrays the aspects of a developing relationship using a biblical metaphor.

“The City and the Stars” – The title of the poem is taken from an early Arthur C. Clarke novel where the last surviving humans live in a huge enclosed arcology on a barren Earth. They have forgotten about the stars completely and lost their aspirations to reach them. I took the same idea and compared it to humans living in a contemporary city. This is one of the poems that stands on the borderline between speculative and mainstream, and it first appeared in a literary magazine, not a speculative publication.

John: What projects do you have on the near and far horizons?

Bruce: For the first time in many years, I’m project-less at the moment. I could put together a retrospective collection of my shorter poems, or an entirely new collection of previously uncollected poems. But the book market is so glutted these days by indie and small press books, and ebooks, often offered for free, that it seems like a fruitless endeavor. Though I will be continuing to submit new poetry and fiction to magazines and anthologies.

John: Thank you

Bruce: Thanks for having me. I hope your readers enjoy the poems.

Published by Karl Rademacher on July 9, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 20, Issue 20 Poetry, Main Features, Poetry

Living in a World of Giants

Bruce Boston

living-in-a-world-of-giants

When the Giants come
striding across our borders,
indifferent to our predictions,
immune to the ingenuity
of our finest technologies,
showing no mercy or regret,
we are helpless before them.

The Giant Wind roars
with irresistible force,
crushing trees and houses,
leaving us without power
in the depth of night

The Giant Rain beats
steadily against the land,
swelling rivers beyond
their banks, flooding
our towns and our lives.

Earth, the greatest Giant
of them all, shakes violently,
toppling buildings and skyways,
sending towering mountains
of ocean rushing against
our shores to raze and
decimate entire cities.

Time and again these Giants
rage through our world,
having their way with us,
indifferent to our forecasts,
immune to the gimmicks
of our human technologies,
showing no pity or remorse,
making sure we remember
how circumstantial we are.

Bruce Boston lives in Ocala, Florida, with his wife, writer-artist Marge Simon, and the ghosts of two cats. He is the author of fifty books and chapbooks, including the novels The Guardener’s Tale and Stained Glass Rain. His writing has appeared in countless publications, most visibly in Asimov’s SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase. One of the leading genre poets for more than a quarter century, Boston has won the Bram Stoker Award for Poetry, the Asimov’s Readers Award, and the Rhysling Award (SFPA), each a record number of times. He has also received a Pushcart Prize for fiction and the Grandmaster Award of the SFPA. He will be Poet Guest of Honor at the 2013 Bram Stoker Awards/World Horror Con to be held in New Orleans. For more information visit www.bruceboston.com.

Published by Karl Rademacher on July 9, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 20, Issue 20 Stories, Main Features, Poetry

For Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets

Bruce Boston

If you’ve heard the stellar vox humana
the untuned ear takes for static,

if you’ve kissed the burning eyelids
of god and seized upon the moon’s

reflection, disjointed and backwards,
in the choppy ink of some alien sea,

then you know how sleek and fleshy,
how treacherous, the stars can become.

While the universe falls with no boundary,
you and I sit in a cafe of a port city

on a planet whose name we’ve forgotten:
the vacuum is behind us and before us,

the spiced ale is cool and hallucinogenic.
Already the candle sparkles in our plates.

(First appeared in Asimov’s SF Magazine, April 1984, Rhysling Award 1985)

Published by Karl Rademacher on July 9, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 20, Issue 20 Poetry, Main Features, Poetry

Visions of the Blue Clone

Bruce Boston

The first of her
came to me on the first night.
She was a woman of mystery
who sang the blues.

The second of her
came to me on the second night.
She had a history
like no other.

The third of her
came to me on the third night.
She was bright and cheery
and full with the fire
that makes life.

The fourth of her
came to me on the fourth night.
The fire was catastrophic.
The blue rains came down
and our wooden ark settled
on a rocky promontory.

The fifth of her
came to me on the fifth night.
We embraced as lovers,
like eagles in an aerie
far above the drenched desert

The sixth of her
came to me on the sixth night.
We entered the star ways
and jaunted faster than light
to her blue sun.

On the seventh night
the six plus one of us rested,
lying between cool sheets
fashioned from the blue
universe of our flesh.

(First appeared in the author’s collection Shades Fantastic, 2006)