tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15916138.post475728552693518153..comments2023-09-25T05:45:41.437-07:00Comments on The Art of Fiction: Influence and GenreUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15916138.post-50767310684288295552012-05-09T03:59:51.894-07:002012-05-09T03:59:51.894-07:00To get published in magazines, you have to sound l...To get published in magazines, you have to sound like everyone else. When you get a book published you have to sound like yourself. And when you're long established you have to sound like no-one else....Adrian Slatcherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13946068316432524571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15916138.post-2347549983458828952012-05-09T03:36:33.840-07:002012-05-09T03:36:33.840-07:00Its not a close comparison - but there is a shared...<i>Its not a close comparison - but there is a shared passion I think</i> - I've never got on with SF poetry though.<br /><br /><i>I wonder about the workshop poem</i> - I've seen various attempts to characterize the "workshop" (or "mainstream" or "new mainstream") poem. Marjorie Perloff didn't narrow things down much when she wrote "the poems you will read in American Poetry Review or similar publications will, with rare exceptions, exhibit the following characteristics: 1) irregular lines of free verse, with little or no emphasis on the construction of the line itself ...; 2) prose syntax with lots of prepositional and parenthetical phrases, laced with graphic imagery or even extravagant metaphor ...; 3) the expression of a profound thought or small epiphany". In Rialto 70, Nathan Hamilton's "product focussed" poems sound rather like what Peter Riley describes in <a href="http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2012/04/poetry-angus/" rel="nofollow">Poetry Prize Culture and the Aberdeen Angus</a>Tim Lovehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00578925224900533603noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15916138.post-45392129285681173642012-05-09T03:21:56.213-07:002012-05-09T03:21:56.213-07:00Point taken , on Edinburgh - though its a long way...Point taken , on Edinburgh - though its a long way from the Royal Mile to Square Mile amd alot of us in between. <br /><br />Its not a close comparison - but there is a shared passion I think, and SF writers who only read SF, poets who only read poetry - as well as an (over?)abundance. <br /><br />Yes, I wonder about the workshop poem - you may be right there - I've only very reecently workshopped anything and it seems a little alien (or martian!) to me.Adrian Slatcherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13946068316432524571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15916138.post-6984269819542779032012-05-09T02:08:17.351-07:002012-05-09T02:08:17.351-07:00"All writers are readers first (at least, all..."<i>All writers are readers first (at least, all good writers are), but in SF I imagine there's an intensity of the relationship that isn't as obvious in other genres.</i>" - Agreed, especially if you include Fantasy - there's all that fan/slash fiction stuff. And SF is a Fractal genre, by which I mean that within SF are many of the sub-categories (War, Romance, Literary) that are general literature categories. <br /><br />I haven't considered the similarities to the world of poetry. There are fewer fan/slash options, but I agree that styles catch on - Martian Poetry, etc. The WWW increases the speed and momentum of the influences - people don't have time to develop Anxiety, and nowadays the next anthology is always less than a year away. <br /><br /><i>The quality, I'd hasten to add, is pretty high - and, even more so, there's very few of those "I did this, I did that" poem that sometimes seemed to suffocate British poetry in a blanket of the overly-familiar.</i> - agreed, though in retrospect we might come to identify today's equivalent of "I did this, I did that" poems. Maybe "the workshop poem"?<br /><br /><i>Shamefully, we've not seen a second northern poetry library to match the southern one.</i> - well, Edinburgh's ok.<br /><br /><i>But poetry and SF have a few things in common. They have both a popular image, and a hardcore following. The former can sometimes deafen the latter ... - their advocates are passionate; their best writers are often their best readers. But also I wonder if both are accidental victims of the paradigm shifts of the information age?</i> - agreed on all that.Tim Lovehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00578925224900533603noreply@blogger.com