This summer, I worked as a research assistant for Professor Lesley Wheeler, helping her compile sources for her scholarly book about speculative poetry titled Poetry’s Possible Worlds. “Speculative” poetry is a genre encompassing science fiction, fantasy, horror, and related “weird” subgenres. My research this summer taught me that speculative elements hide where you would least expect them.

In my twentieth-century American poetry class, we recently read a selection of Robert Frost poems. Frost maintains a reputation as of the most well known American poets of the past century. His poems abound with natural and bucolic imagery; his work seems to deal exclusively with the fundamental themes of marital love, manual labor, and home. However, this summer taught me to see Frost in a new light. Rather, my new speculative lenses illuminate Frost’s darkness. “Mending Wall,” one of his most famous poems, concerns an ambiguity about walls and boundaries. The speaker associates tradition with darkness, and even a weird sense of magic:

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. (35-38)

If elves aren’t speculative, I don’t know what is. Here, Frost utilizes magic’s weird sense of possibility to highlight his uncertainty. The speaker wants his neighbor to recognize the magic force that seeks to destroy the boundary between them, but he can’t pinpoint a name for this magic either.

Frost isn’t the only traditional poet I have noticed employing speculative elements. It seems as though the more I think about it, the more I notice authors toying with notions of uncertainty and possibility that come with magic. It makes sense—a poem is a perfect environment for magic, as part of the poem’s job is to lure the reader into its structural and semantic world. One vein of Poetry’s Possible Worlds discusses how speculative poems demonstrate a marked ability to ensnare readers; poetic rhythm works together with imagery to draw us into the poem’s world through a process called entrainment. I researched the cognitive side of this process, but also dwelled on the concept of how creating an alternate space in a literary work provides the reader not just with a sense of escape, but also with a heightened sense of communion with the author-creator of the alternative world.

This communion has power. By engaging in the immersive process of reading speculative poetry, the reader engages with the mind of the poet, often reemerging changed in some way. Poetry’s ability to change the way I see things and provide momentary escape from the chaos of reality is why I love it. Poetry, especially speculative poetry, changes the way I see my own world. Even if you are skeptical of speculative genres, I encourage you to look for the magic hiding in unexpected places, not just in poetry, but also in your own life. Look for walls. Notice elves.

– Annie Persons

And my junior year begins.  While I will admit that I was anxiously awaiting summer vacation by the time May rolled around last year, I have to say that I have never been more excited for a school year to start up again than I am this year.  Along with having the opportunity to participate in creating the upcoming issue of Shenandoah, I am also taking classes for my English major that I have absolutely loved so far. One of these classes focuses on twentieth-century American poetry.

This poetry class was the course I was both excited for yet nervous about in equal measure.  Poetry can be intimidating, and after a four-year break during which I took solely literature based courses, I found myself feeling extremely anxious as school crept closer about the prospect of re-immersing myself in the vastly different world of poetry.  After taking so many literature classes, I am now comfortable with its format and the various ways in which one can seek to interpret meaning from a novel.  Poetry, however, is a whole new ballgame, full of new terms and aspects to be analyzed.  The scariest of these new realms that I have been attempting to familiarize myself with has been meter.  After taking a Shakespeare course last winter, I have found myself unconsciously attempting to force all the poetry I have read thus far to fit the only meter I am currently comfortable with: iambic pentameter.  Obviously, this method isn’t working out too well for me so far.  After only two days of this poetry class, the sheer expanse of poetic knowledge that I have yet to comprehend is somewhat daunting.  However, I find myself looking forward to expanding my limited knowledge despite my nerves.

Even though my knowledge of the technical side of poetry is limited, I have always loved reading it.  I am fascinated by its ability to mean something different to every person who reads it.  With literature, there is a basic message built into the plot that the author lays out for the reader to find and relate to.  With poetry, finding a message is much more personal.  While literature is based upon an idea created in an author’s mind, poetry seems to be the product of a poet’s soul.  Reading poetry feels a lot like I imagine reading a person’s diary would feel like.  The characters and events don’t seem make-believe, but feel very grounded in reality.  This intimate aspect of poetry is what I love most about it, as I find myself emotionally engaged in the words I am reading in a way that the distant, “movie-like” view present in literature prevents.  With poetry, I am living the words rather than viewing them as an outsider.  While being so emotionally engaged in the thoughts of someone else can be overwhelming, the contemplative nature of poetry is also what makes it so exciting.

I cannot wait for a term full of introspection.

– Katie Toomb