The Truth a Poet Can Tell

Abstract

The Truth a Poet Can Tell Monique Roussel My father is a poet. He composes sonnets from behind the wheel of a school bus, although he does not know they are sonnets. His is the poetry of two wives: one, a jezebel, the second a nurse to his stroke. It is the poetry of too much drink, a shortness of breath, then the grip of God’s hand about the throat, and a falling. Swaying in his bus driver’s seat like Keats in a reverie, he sings the verses of his life like psalms, prayers to the Roman Catholic God of damnation, of the wagging calloused finger that lifted his bloated carcass into a silver wheelchair. When he was taken in this way, Mother told me to rejoice. They wheeled him before my tender little body, a crumpled figure in a plaid shirt, his face moon-like with the ever-present sag of remorse, his hands and feet shackled to the rolling chair, Aunt Irene standing beside him in a pale yellow dress tall as a column, her hair red as fire. My father’s life is a poem, large and aching as his hands after fixing an engine, big and swelled, bleeding and calloused as Christ’s. Monique Roussel is a producer, writer, and sometime radio talk-show panelist on SiriusXM and WBAI 99.5 fm. She holds a master’s in creative writing and English literature from New York University. Her work has appeared in Conclave Literary Journal, Naugatuck River Review, the Tulane Review, and the Labletter Annual Journal of Art and Literature, among others. She also has work upcoming in Like a Fat Gold Watch, an anthology celebrating the life and work of Sylvia Plath. She is the recipient of a 2010 Conclave Literary Journal Award for Poetry. Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction (2d ed., 1995), is chockablock with mini-essays on around 3,500 books (!). Anyone who isn’t seduced by at least a few dozen of Pringle’s entries should probably seek literary sustenance beyond the fields of sf. The importance of novels notwithstanding, sf authors have always introduced and refined new ideas, themes, and ways of telling stories in shorter forms. Since 1953 readers have voted Hugo awards to fiction they consider the year’s best, and the series of anthologies The Hugo Winners (1962, 1971, 1994, 1997) represent their view of the finest short fiction the field has produced . The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a professional organization, began voting the similarly intended Nebula awards in 1966, and annual collections of nominated and Nebula-winning fiction have appeared ever since. To complement these, SFWA members chose the best short stories and novellas published before 1965 and have generated the multivolume Science Fiction Hall of Fame (1971, 1974, 1982, 1986). But the best of all possible ways into sf is to read it in the company of a savvy, lucid expert. In 1970 sf author Robert Silverberg organized a cadre of commentators (mostly, other sf writers) to elucidate thirteen first-rate stories from 1897 through the late 1960s. Silverberg’s The Mirror of Infinity was, for me, a revelation; it changed forever how I thought about sf. In 2010 a worthy successor finally appeared: The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (see WLT, Sept. 2011, 68). Editors Arthur B. Evans, Istvan CsicseryRonay Jr., Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, Rob Latham, and Carol McGuirk provide insights into the nature, history, and reading of sf via commentary on fifty-two exemplary stories. Now that’s a companion to cherish. Norman, Oklahoma july– august 2012 41 photo : brian dalthorp ...