poems published in 2011


Short poems

• "Cold War Champions: Bobby Fischer and Yuri Gagarin Descend to Earth," Strange Horizons, 3 January 2011


• "Comet Kohutek," Star*Line, Jan/March 2011


• "Tachyons," Star*Line, Jan/Mar 2011


• "The Editors Regret," Paper Crow, Spring-Summer 2011


• "Moon Girl, Earth Guy," Mythic Delirium, Summer-Fall 2011 (Issue 25)


• "Moving to Enceladus," Stone Telling, Issue 3, March 2011


• "Persephone in Autumn," Ideomancer, Vol 10 No. 4 (2011)


• "The Graffiti Tree," Star*Line, 34.3, April/June 2011


• "Fire River," Silver Blade, issue 12, Fall 2011
  


• "False Memory" Chiaroscuro (Chizine), Issue 49, 2011.


• "2002: Galileo Dies," Star*Line, 34.4, October/December 2011

Scifaiku

• "Dumb as a Rock," (haiku) Star*Line, 34.1, Jan/Mar 2011


• (untitled), Star*Line, 34.1, Jan/Mar 2011

Long Poem

• "The Legend of the Emperor's New Space Suit (A Tale of Consensus Reality)," New Myths, Issue 17, December 1, 2011

Non-genre

• "Four Poems," The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Oct. 2011:
  
  • Cow
  
  
  • Joshua Tree Honeymoon
  
  
  • One Day
  
  
  • Italian Mama
  
  
  
  


• “Lady M,” Best of Ohio 2011 (Ohio Poetry Day 2011)
  


• "You Dropped a Metaphor,” Best of Ohio 2011 (Ohio Poetry Day 2011)
  

reprinted 2011:

• "Galileo Flies at Midnight,"
  Astropoetica, Winter 2011


• "Spirit at Troy," Astropoetica, Winter 2011

 Does anybody else resent the incredible indignity of having a serious post defaced by a spammer?

My post about my son's burial has received multiple attacks from people (yes, people are behind this crap, not robots) trying to sell timeshares and fake viagra.

I know it's random -- the people running the bots can have no way of knowing that they've invaded a very somber space -- but they still deserve serious opprobrium.  

The infernal gall!

 Hugo voting deadline is tonight at 11:59 PDT.  

The  novella category is very strong, but I think Geoff Landis's "The Sultan of the Clouds" clearly leads the field in all the virtues of classic science fiction.  You may well have read it, since he's my husband, and if you know me, you probably know him.  But just in case you haven't. you have just time to read it before the deadline.   It's at www.geoffreylandis.com/Sultan.pdf.

In case you think I'm prejudiced, consider that maybe I married him because he had the soul to write this story with all the elements of great science fiction, including not just accurate and amazing science and plot twists, but also an account of thwarted love, plus a fabulously believable and vital woman character.  

Partly.   He had other virtues, too.

In any case, whether you favor his story or another, please vote.

 Enjoying the new "Alice in Wonderland" with Ginnie and Bernie.  

http://www.tribtoday.com/photos/news/lg/547737_1.jpg

For Jack's burial, I put together this collage of quotations from Hamlet. My sister kept wanting to use the lines "Good night, sweet prince,/ and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest," but the lines before and after it were not appropriate. So I scavenged lines from throughout the play.

Hamlet is a play with a lot of thoughts about the death of a loved one. It makes you wonder what really happened to Shakespeare's son.

I continue to feel that my son was a hero, who battled twin enemies his whole life and lost valiantly. That is why I had him buried with his favorite sword.

Here's my collage:


Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.

There’s a special providence inthe fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, ’tis not to come;
if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come:
the readiness is all.
Since no man has aught of what he leaves,
what is’t to leave betimes?

This was a man, take him for all in all,
We shall not look upon his like again.

And call the noblest to the audience:
Give order that his body
High on a stage be placed to the view;
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world:

He is dead and gone, my friends
He is dead and gone;
At his heels a grass green turf,
At his head a stone.

We thought his bride-bed to have deck’d,
And not have strew’d his grave.

Oh, he has cleft our hearts in twain.

Let seven captains
Bear him like a soldier to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have prov’d most royally: and, for his passage,
The soldiers’ music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.–

O proud death,
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou such a noble prince at a sudden
So bloodily hast struck?

The sight is dismal;
–Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

The rest is silence.

And here is his obit:





Jack L. Brizzi Jr. 1976-2010
October 1, 2010
WARREN - Jack L. Brizzi Jr., 33, of Warren, passed away unexpectedly Monday, Sept. 27, 2010, at home.
Born Oct. 25, 1976, in Warren, he excelled in swimming and diving competitions as a middle school student, and as an adult was an artist and musician, enrolled at the time of his death as a student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh online, where he was studying graphic arts and video game design.
He was educated at SS. Peter and Paul School and graduated from the Trumbull County Joint Vocational School and Champion High School.
He has worked as an actor as well as in retail and marketing research.
He enjoyed gaming and was a science fiction fan and also studied martial arts and swordsmanship. He published online reviews, poetry and articles on death metal music and video games. As a musician, he played lead guitar for Frag Corps, the band he founded and which performed in various Ohio and Pennsylvania venues in the 1990s.
He was a member of First Unitarian Church of Youngstown, where he enjoyed challenging discussions of politics and theology. He was well-known as a convivial and gracious host. Family and friends will miss his wonderful sense of humor. A light has gone out of the world with his passing.
Mourning him in lifelong devotion and love are his mother, Mary A. Turzillo (Geoffrey A. Landis) of Berea; his father, Jack L. Brizzi Sr. of Warren; his aunt, Jane Ann Turzillo, and cousins, John Paul (Kindra) Paxton, Nicholas and Nathan Paxton, all of Akron; his uncle, James A. Brizzi of North Truro, Mass., and cousins, Tristana Brizzi, also of North Truro, Jaime K. Brizzi of Eugene, Ore., and Cassandra Brizzi of Ashville, N.C.; plus many friends.
An avid animal lover, he also leaves his beloved German Shepherd, Bael, and beloved cats, Azrael and Teriel.
A funeral service will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Youngstown, with the Rev. Matthew D. Alspaugh officiating. Friends may call from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday at McFarland & Son Funeral Home and one hour prior to the service Sunday at the church.
Graveside interment services will follow Monday at Lakeview Cemetery, Section 45, near Daffodil Hill, at 11:00 AM.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Jack L. Brizzi Jr. Memorial Scholarship Fund at Kent State University Trumbull Campus, 4314 Mahoning Ave. N.W., Warren, Ohio 44483.
Visit www.mcfarlandfuneral.com to view this obituary and send condolences. (special notice)
*

I recently read two Big Scenes (to be fair, I don't think the Lee Child scene is THE Big scene in the novel, but it has that amazing quality of making you feel you're witnessing narrative magic) which illustrated to me the different ways in which fiction writers engage their readers. One was from Lee Child's Killing Floor , the other from Greg Iles' Blood Memory.   (Sorry about the different sizes of the two cover images; I'm more interested in the text than the covers, though they are very beautiful.)







Let me please issue this SPOILER ALERT. I am about to discuss details in the resolution of suspense in both novels.

Lee Child shows his POV detective (Reacher) going to meet his dead brother's lover, who brings a briefcase full of evidence that will solve the brother's murder and also bring a vicious serial murder/counterfeit case to light and to justice. At the airport, Reacher sees his target as she leaves the plane, she recognizes him, but they are separated by the glass partition between incoming passengers exiting the "sterile area" and the area for people meeting their plane. Reacher sees the woman being carried toward baggage claim, but knows she has no baggage. When he fights his way through the crowd, he finds her rolly bag cycling on the baggage carousel, storms through the curtain into the luggage bays, finds her briefcase, now empty, and then her bloody body. The scene is extremely visual, with sights, crowds, and loud noises. It is intensely cinematic.

In the Greg Iles scene, Cat, the POV, is being raped by her half-uncle who is planning to then tie her up and send her into the river to drown inside her beloved childhood caregiver's Cadillac. He is holding a gun to her head while he rapes her. She lies under him considering how to get away, and goes through various schemes, including biting through his jugular vein or his carotid artery, but rejects each as not feasible. She finally settles on crushing his trachea with her teeth. She licks the rapist's neck to locate the right spot, then savagely bites, reflecting that her father must truly have been her father (something her abusive grandfather has made her doubt) since she has such fine strong teeth, like her father. The rapist is thrown off and it flashes through her mind that she resembles a leopardess, similar to the childhood toy with which her grandfather smothered her father. The scene is full of tension, but the tension is built with scheming and emotion and even symbolism. It is intensely novelistic.

I'm not saying I prefer one or the other of these scenes, but I am saying that cinematic writing is NOT the only way to go. Greg Iles is an intensely psychological writer, and in Blood Memory he has written maybe the best psychological thriller I have ever read, up there with Stephen King though in a slightly different genre.

The cinematic technique is seductive for a writer; for one thing it offers the possibility of the novel becoming a movie. But it has a weakness: sometimes it is hard for the reader to picture the actual scene, the layout of the action. I still am not sure how Reacher's antagonist manages to snatch his target away, and the scene has less intensity for me because I am trying to figure out why his walkway is going opposite the stream of traffic of the exiting passengers. Nor are senses of smell, touch, and taste engaged. In the Blood Memory scene, we are inside Cat's head. The great strength of narrative is that we identify so strongly with the POV that we are taken outside ourselves and into another person's mind: one writer has pointed out that this is the nearest thing to telepathy that humans ever experience. And all the senses are engaged, not just sight and sound.

Orson Scott Card describes levels of engagement in narrative point of view, and this is what he would call "hot" point of view, something that I confess I am addicted to, not just as a writer, but as a reader.

My message? I guess it's that the novel is a magnificent monument to the human imagination, and it's hard to imagine anything short of full-body, five-sense virtual reality ever to rival it.

Bat night at Lake View Cemetery was enchanting. The naturalist, Tim Krynak, waited until two bats were caught in the bat-net that extended like a gossamer volleyball net in the open space in the cemetery.  He carefully disentangled them, then held them while they screamed their heads off and tried to bite him. Feisty little critters! He also showed us a baby bat which, having been raised by humans, cannot be released, and an old bat which is too frail to fly any more. The baby is sort of tame, but it still makes a lot of noise, echo-locating. The noise is actually above the hearing range of humans, but the naturalist had a device to lower the pitch so we could hear the racket they make.

When the two healthy bats were released and fluttered away like furry fairies,  the crowd applauded.  It was a thrill.

Their faces are so ugly-cute -- tiny tiny and very delicate, like little pug-dogs or gargoyles. I told the naturalist I thought they were adorable, and he probably thought I was nuts.   But they are adorable.   A photo of them doesn't do justice to the animated little beings themselves.  

A few in the crowd (over a hundred people) offered up anti-bat questions, like whether they spread rabies (there is an average of one case of a human rabies death in the US per year, and it usually has nothing to do with bats) and whether they are blood-suckers (there are three species world-wide which do suck blood, but they are not US bats). Apparently nobody still has the stupid idea that they are attracted to women's hair and get tangled in it.

This is an annual event, and if you are a Clevelander, I do urge you to watch for it on the Lake View Cemetery website and attend next year.  

To put the topper on our evening, there was an International Space Station pass (see Heavens Above to find future passes), and I had the temerity to tell one of the other viewers that I had two stories ("Mars Is No Place for Children" and my novel, An Old Fashioned Martian Girl, up there for recreational reading.

Geoff and I then went to Cleveland's Little Italy, a really vibrant and hopping area full of art and great cuisine, and I looked up my old apartment on Murray Hill.

Two reasons to love Cleveland -- no mistake, it's a gem on the lake.

This is the Vogan sestina created by the panel and audience at Confluence last weekend --

Beelzebug Had a Megrim and out Came a Vogon Poem
A Vogon Sestina by Brea and Mary and the Vogon poetry group of Confluence 2010

why not just burlap
there's nothing as pretentious as a line ending in cormulent
the corpulent coprolite was defenestrated
in burlap. An end that ends in slime
vexing hexing texting googleplexing
disco demitasse of slime perambulates

entrez the husband perambulating
behold the buffalo in shorts of burlap
the next complex of googleplexing
waving tentacles so sexy and cromulent
exposed chest slime
No refunds Pat had to be defenestrated

His chance of immortality depending on defenestration
peritineally prehensive perennially purpose to perambulate
not in the face, disco slime!
burlap
I like with my scones some cromulents
prolix something something something googleplex

In 3 D sestina sestina googleplex
I like to defenestrate
can't you go to jail for that? That's cromulent!
My thought perambulate
like nothing nothing burlap
are we just talking about florgs & slime?

Slime slime oh find the sublime blind divine slime
Chthulu ate some daleks and out came some googleplex
Exterminate exterminate burlap
cause we all know Chthulu hates burlap and will defenstrate
Coagulated perambulation
I hate cromulent

Unpretentious mincing was particularly cromulent
people don't understand the intricacies of slime
this line was supposed to end in perambulate but it doesn't
Yet. Just enjoy the excess gooooogleplex
intentional flaw makes it sublime art gratulant
defenestrate defenestrate
And the cursor tried to flee taking the burlap.

Sanctimonious burlap sacrifices to the God of cromulent
it's hard to lick the slime of the defenestrated
without delicious googleplexing how could we perambulate?