Distillations

RSS feed for this section

Distillations: The Inspiration of Others

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ August 15, 2008

Inspiration can be a mysterious thing. However, this month we will explore three poems from Mythic Delirium #18 which spring from a specific inspiration documented in each poem. These poems are not copies of the original, but new art inspired by the old.

Distillations: Repeating Forms

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ July 16, 2008

The act of repetition is one of the paradoxes of poetry. In the confined world of a poem, what is the use of redundancy? However wasteful it may seem, there are many poetry forms built around obligatory patterns of repetition. In this column, we will explore two rather different forms, the villanelle and the triolet, [...]

Distillations: Tell Me a Story

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ June 19, 2008

A poem with a plot seems like a violation of some kind of natural law. The condensed design of poetry conveys the entirety of a moment at once. How can a poem build a narrative arc like that of fiction? The answer lies in the history of poetry itself. At one time, poetry’s mission was [...]

Distillations: Breaking the Line

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ May 16, 2008

Once upon a time, it was easy for both poets and readers to know where to expect a line break. The rhythm of the meter shows it and by the rhyme you would know it. However, the previous example is an example of why this approach is less common today. It takes a great amount [...]

Distillations: Explorations of Hunger

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ April 15, 2008

In this month’s Distillations column, we explore three poems involving different twists on the mundane experience of eating and the experience of hunger. The narrators in each poem are human, and the food being discussed is not particularly exotic: risotto, soufflés, and mother’s milk. However, each poem shows hunger from an unexpected direction.

Distillations: Visions of Time

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ March 15, 2008

Around here, March is when spring starts making its tentative appearance. If fall and winter are about remembering the past, spring is all about the future. In many ways, this idea of change is where science fiction began. What will happen next? What will the world be like if X happens? What will [...]

Distillations: Scifaiku

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ February 15, 2008

Even during a leap year, February is the shortest month. For this month’s column, we will explore the haiku form, which is short by design. Unlike the miserable cold of February (at least for those in the northern hemisphere), haiku is delightful. Everything unnecessary has been pared away. All that remains are the seventeen syllables, [...]

Distillations: Assonance

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ January 16, 2008

This month we continue our exploration of poetry techniques with assonance, defined as the repetition of vowel sounds. Last month, I referred to assonance as “alliteration’s crafty cousin.” The reason for this is that assonance is much less visually obvious. Although the English language is quite free with the correspondence of spelling to sound, this [...]

Distillations: Alliteration

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ December 16, 2007

As I mentioned last month, this column will be exploring various poetry techniques each month and how they are used in current speculative poetry. This month’s featured technique is alliteration, which is defined as the repetition of initial consonants or consonant sounds. It is a simple technique which can be powerful if not overdone. It [...]

Distillations: Imagery

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ November 16, 2007

For many people, poetry is a strange new land, as bizarre as any landscape imagined by Tolkien, Heinlein, or in extreme cases, Lovecraft. As the number of poetry reviewers at The Fix grows, I will be taking some time each month to discuss the mechanics of poetry. This guide will not make the landscape any [...]

Distillations: An Introduction

By Jennifer Mercer ⋅ October 13, 2007

Welcome to Distillations, a monthly review of Speculative Poetry. The field of Speculative Poetry embraces every subgenre of science fiction and fantasy imaginable in every existing poetry form, plus some made up fresh for the occasion. What it doesn’t include is a lot of words. That means that every letter, every piece of punctuation, [...]

—