Contributor Spotlight: Heather Hughes

Extrapolating Fantastically: Notes on a Science / Fiction Poem

I’m a sucker for the Oxford English Dictionary, and I love that the first definition, from the 1850s, for “Science Fiction”—tagged, amusingly, as obsolete and rare—reads thus: Fiction or poetry depicting some aspect of current scientific knowledge. I am often unsure whether poems of mine, such as “Margin / Mitosis,” could be classified as science poems (factual) or science fiction poems (imaginary). A definition such as this one gives me another way to think about these marvelous tensions.

The OED entry offers an incredible permissiveness and a useful reminder: that we can use science like autobiography; that is, we can let go of fact to get at truth. I don’t mean to imply or endorse a dismissive or shallow engagement with scientific truth. A deep appreciation of science can lead a poet to a more finely crafted image, a more surprising simile, or an unexpected meter or form. Marianne Moore’s “An Octopus,” for instance, relies on the poetic assimilation of scientific facts for its metaphorical link of mountain to mollusk, which sets the scene for a voyage of discovery, of truth seeking, as the poem unfolds. It also allows the poet a kind of fantastic expansiveness that incorporates everything from Greek antiquity to Henry James to beavers to businessmen. Perhaps what I more exactly mean is that mixing poetry and science can allow a third creation to emerge, a type of science fiction that takes fact and projects it into imaginative territory to get at truth. We, poets, have this extraordinary freedom to extrapolate fantastically.

For my writing process this means finding inspiration in both research and play. Scientific studies of Mars (a perennially fascinating sci-fi setting) continually uncover new and strange and unsettling theories about the planet’s aquatic geologic history. Tsunamis on Mars and microscopic ocean life look much less like fiction than they did only a couple decades ago.

The inspiration for “Margin / Mitosis” arose out of my poetic obsessions with outer space and the sea: What if there actually were a species of fish on Mars long ago? And what if some of their old bones could evaporate whole into the solar system as the atmosphere dissipated? Is that a terrible or a wonderful fate? Is it another end or a type of rebirth? This image  is a fantasy, albeit one that may be feasible on a sub-atomic scale—on the scale of metaphor. These what-ifs move the poem away from the current scientific knowledge of a vast Martian Atlantic into a science fictional realm where fossils might swim off into the interstellar unknown.

The aims of science and poetry seem extremely similar to me: to expand the limits of human knowledge by using imagination and intense observation to test and question what we otherwise take for granted. Neither the scientist nor the poet is entirely satisfied with their work until they’ve explored the complexities of a particular truth to the fullest extent possible with the tools available, whether those tools involve telescopes or alliteration or time travel or all of the above. 

SRR Hosts Poetry Chapbook Contest

SRR POETRY CHAPBOOK CONTEST

Reading Period: August 1st-31st

The winning chapbook will be published by Split Rock Review in 2017, and the author will receive 10 handcrafted, saddle-stitched copies of their winning chapbook (ISBN included). Split Rock Review will be selling copies through our website and at literary events. We don’t have a celebrity judge for our chapbook contest. Members from the Split Rock Review editorial board read the submissions, and the final judge is the editor. To find out what we like, please review past magazine contributors.

Chapbook Submission Guidelines  

• Split Rock Review accepts submissions and payment of the entry fee ($15) exclusively through our online submission manager, Submittable.
• Manuscripts may be between 16 to 24 pages in length. No more than one poem per page.
• Submissions are read blind. Do NOT include your name or any identifying information anywhere on the manuscript. When you send electronically, it'll be in the submitter info only.
• Please include a title page with ONLY the title, a table of contents, and an acknowledgements page (not included in page count).
• The collection as a whole must be unpublished, but individual publications are fine. Please include specific acknowledgments if any of poems have appeared elsewhere. Indicate which poems have been previously published and by whom, as we do consider unpublished individual pieces for possible publication in Split Rock Review.
• Submitting multiple manuscripts is fine with entry fees for each.
•  Co-authored manuscripts are accepted.
• Writers from all backgrounds are encouraged to submit.

• Why a reading fee? We are an independent, nonprofit literary publisher. Reading fees help defray, but do not entirely cover, the cost of our online submission manager, website, and publishing expenses. 

Contributor Spotlight: Julie Hungiville LeMay

Ge(ne)ology found its start in a tent during a September snowstorm in Southcentral Alaska several years ago. My daughter, Eowyn Ivey, and I had been flown by a 4-seater Cessna 185 into a remote area for a few days of camping and fossil hunting. We hiked and searched for fossils along Ammonite Creek the first day and found, in the creekbed, some rocks imprinted with small brachiopods. Eowyn says finding fossils is like blueberry picking – you’re walking along and see none, and then your vision shifts and they are everywhere.   

That night when I closed my eyes, I could only see rocks with fossils, the sensation strangely like that of floating in bed after a long day swimming. Outside the tent it was a whiteout and we could hear the wind and snow. 

Plane unable to fly in and trapped for a few extra days in inclement weather, we mostly stayed in the tent. We burrowed into our sleeping bags for warmth, read, wrote, and read out loud to each other to make our books last longer.

The title for the poem came later, as I struggled with something like “Geology/Genealogy.” I was caught by the sense of their similarity in sound and also how they both have an aspect of study and of time. I was finishing up my MFA at Antioch University, L.A. and when my poetry mentor, Jenny Factor, suggested the current “Ge(ne)ology,” I thought it was the perfect title, one that I am sure I wouldn’t have found on my own. I love how the “(ne)” is wrapped in the parentheses, just like a fossil within a rock."

Contributor Spotlight: Kristin Laurel

LEARNING TO FLY

Notes on Icarus, Plate VIII: Matisse 

Don’t you hate it when someone says, “the story wrote itself,” or, “I just sat down and let the creative energy flow?” At the time I wrote this poem, that’s how I imagined writing would be:  Easy, blissful, transcendental even.  That’s how it is when you’re newly in love and I had just fallen in love with poetry. I was also a newly divorced mom with three kids, working two part-time jobs as a nurse and enrolled in a two-year writing program.

This poem stemmed from a writing prompt. Our assignment was to write an ekphrastic, which is a form of writing, mostly poetry, wherein the author describes and writes about another’s work of art.  I remember thinking, “What do I know about poetry or art?”  I hadn’t even heard of the word ekphrastic up until that day.  

And yet something was compelling me, (as it still does) to break away from everything and everyone and create.  I had discovered a new sense of independence with writing and an inner voice that was confident and curious. Should I have been downstairs with my kids for that hour or two? What kind of mother was I?  My new voice told me my kids were old enough to pour themselves a bowl of cereal for dinner that night.

I’ve always liked the work of Henri Matisse.  I even have a couple of his prints in the house, so I chose him.  His vibrant colors and slightly distorted images speak to me of purity, of light. There is something bare and honest about his portraits.  I am narratively driven. For me, stories of personal experience feed me and make me feel connected so I guess it makes sense that I, (the narrator) would speak to Matisse directly. I started researching what he and his pal Picasso had to say about his work and I couldn’t resist jotting down the lines and later opening the poem with, "Picasso said you have sun in your belly, / you have said your colors sing."

Scrolling through some of his artwork, his cutout, Icarus, Plate VIII caught my eye.  Such a simple, stunning depiction:  A large black shell of a figure:  Part man?  Part bird?  There was a red hole where the heart should be, surrounded by gold stars and my favorite color, blue.  Plus, the story of Icarus is one of the few things I did remember enjoying from High School.  Icarus was the Greek kid whose father made him wings out of bird feathers and wax and told him not to fly too close to the ocean or the sun. The ocean represented complacency and if he flew too close his wings would get damp and clogged with salt.  If he flew too close to the sun, (which represented hubris) the wax would melt off his wings. Icarus reminded me of myself as a teenager; he flew too close to the sun and came crashing down.

As I continued to read about Matisse, I was truly inspired.  I mean here was this artistic genius, a revolutionary, who started and ended his artistic career in a sickbed. Nothing was going to stop him. Even though I don’t like all of the telling, I felt it was important to have some biographical information included in the beginning of the poem to make it more accessible. I read that his daughter had been captured by Nazi’s and Matisse’s Icarus may have been “falling for human frailty, a father’s hope.”  It’s all so subjective and mysterious isn’t it?  How does anyone truly understand what an artist intends?  Does the artist herself know? Matisse’s daughter escaped, and his Icarus did not seem tragic to me. Hence the lines:                                                                     

Perhaps your Icarus is not falling

but is suspended by blue

his golden feathers, have melted into stars,

his small red heart, a capillary of Sun.

After this stanza, the poem jump shifts. Maybe it was the inspiration I had from Matisse and the story of Icarus percolating in my subconscious but there was also a significant thunderstorm that developed that night. Everything was off-kilter and it was exciting: the wind was gusting, the windows were shaking, the neighbor’s trash can had tipped over, and papers were flying.  I went downstairs to check on the kids and they were having a wild time.  These were the images they gave me:  Brightly colored Uno Cards, unadulterated laughter, lit candles and messy, spilled wax dripping down the stereo speaker. 

Outside my window, objects were literally flying. Inside the house, the children were figuratively flying. I had also been released from my maternal guilt so I went back upstairs and finished the poem, allowing the narrator to take off and fly too, ending with a bit of lyrical insight: "There are days, when I throw myself into the wind. / I want to live with nothing left over, especially words." 

Seven years have passed since I wrote that poem. My youngest child graduates next year. Outside, it’s snowing silently.  I no longer write in bursts; I have a dedicated day or two a week to write. I’m still in love, but right now, poetry and I are in a bit of a complacent slump. My dog died and I’ve resorted to writing cat poems.  I can also spend half a day contemplating a comma or a semicolon.  Like any relationship, writing is hard work, but I’m so grateful we found each other.  For me, there’s nothing more promising than the opportunity of a blank page.

Matisse described painting as “some kind of paradise.”  No matter what our medium, I think being an artist is a brave and daring thing.  It is an impossible quest, really, to try and recreate with words, so much of human experience which is indescribable, inexpressible.  And yet it is a gift. When we are in the midst of its creative power, we don’t have to be anything the rest of the world wants us to be.  Art gives us freedom; freedom to be reckless, rebellious, calm or meditative; freedom to crash into the ocean or fly too close to the sun.  And the best part is we get to do it over and over again.