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The Heartbeat of the Universe: Poems from Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact 2012–2022 by Emily HockadayMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
[Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this anthology, in exchange for an honest review.]
This generously sized anthology collects poems from ten years (2012-2022) of Asimov's Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact, as selected by Senior Managing Editor Emily Hockaday. As Hockaday also possesses an MFA in poetry (from NYU), one might expect the selections to be a bit different than the standard run -- if there is such a thing! -- of speculative poetry.
One would not be wrong. To begin with, there are both heavy-hitting SF names -- Jane Yolen and Joe Haldeman among others -- and notable speculative poets like Bruce Boston, Robert Frazier, G.O. Clark, Jessy Randall, Mary Soon Lee, and Jennifer Crow. The poems themselves are organized in five sections ranging from completely science-based themes to hard SF, time travel, space travel, and the complex intersections of human nature and future existence. Overall quality is consistently high, though the science poems in particular may be a little opaque for some (or most) readers. Folks, that's what Wikipedia is for. I resorted to it several times during my reading, and was always rewarded with a deeper understanding of the poem in question.
The multi-layered nature of most of these poems -- even the staunchest hard science ones -- is every bit as evident as it is in modern mainstream verse. And, like modern mainstream anthologies, the lover of formal verse will find very little of it here. This was one of my few complaints about this anthology, however, and primarily a matter of personal taste.
Overall, this anthology is a valuable addition to the libraries of both SF readers and poetry lovers, whether they happen to be both or not. Unless one regularly reads Asimov's or Analog, most of the work here is likely to be unfamiliar. Highly recommended.
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