Speculative poetry is the work of the present. It imagines what most of us will get wrong, a future more complicated and snaking, slow or quick, and wholly terrifying than what we will dream. Maybe this poem is about bees and maybe it isn’t; I won’t know until it’s too late for it to be anything else. – Tracy McCusker
In her latest Playtime post (seriously, the woman is a dynamo!), Tracy delivers a rejoinder to Alan DeNiro’s manifesto, Notes on Speculative Poetry. Appropriately, it is in the form of a prose poem. I had to read it twice: once for comprehension, again for pleasure. A few more times, I expect, for the accrual of wisdom. If I had the energy or wit, I’d compare Tracy’s thoughts to Ursula K. LeGuin’s as laid out in Language of the Night, which strikes me as a potentially fruitful exercise. Instead, I’ll just throw that comparison out there and let you lot work it out, if it so pleases you. I really enjoyed “Towards Speculative Poetry,” though. It’s a great piece. Let me know what you all think. ☕
