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Conditions of Sentient Life
A book of fantasy and horror poetry.
- GenresPoetry
40 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1995
10 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Boston
352 books117 followersI've published more than sixty books and chapbooks, including the novels Stained Glass Rain and the best-of fiction collection Masque of Dreams. My work ranges from broad humor to literary surrealism, with many stops along the way for science fiction, fantasy, and horror. My novel The Guardener's Tale (Sam's Dot, 2007) was a Bram Stoker Award Finailist and a Prometheus Award Nominee. My stories and poems have appeared in hundreds of publications, including Asimov's SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase, and received a number of awards, most notably, a Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov's Readers' Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. For more information, please visit my website at http://www.bruceboston.com/
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 19, 2011
Conditions of Sentient Life is a one-of-a-kind collection of 44 poems and flash fictions on dark red text against gorgeous cream-colored acid-free paper. The intricate illustrations are by Marge Simon. I only wished that the stunning illustration on page 35 was selected as the cover art.
The first poem, “Stars May Rise to Hell and Back,” tells the reader again and again that:
“…hunger has no mouth to sing…”
The piece’s musicality is a paean to the apocalypse which comes in various forms in the ensuing pages of the book. From the hopelessness of “Future Past: An Exercise in Horror” which starts off with:
“Assume tomorrow has already come and gone
and you now inhabit no more than a string of
damaged yesterdays…”
to the emergence of technology in “Human/Technological Dimensions on the Eve of the Bimillennium,” which scars us to the point when we end up asking ourselves:
“When did we
become so small
we can no longer
touch the moon?”
The flash fiction, “Dream of the Burmese Gardener,” is a surreal account of how galaxies are created. Mr. Saketa, one of the lascivious inhabitants of a certain manor house, carefully fashions “the first planet in the universe to be composed entirely of dead aphids.”
“Refugee” is a tight, meditative piece about the subjectivity of reality. Oh, and it doesn’t fail to entertain with juxtapositions like: “the mayor’s beautiful daughter…or is it the chimp?”
Conditions of Sentient Life is beautifully capped by “Gravity Drives the Blood and Bends the Light” which declares that
“…when we reach up it calls us down…”
These lines ring in the mind, and they ring hard.
The first poem, “Stars May Rise to Hell and Back,” tells the reader again and again that:
“…hunger has no mouth to sing…”
The piece’s musicality is a paean to the apocalypse which comes in various forms in the ensuing pages of the book. From the hopelessness of “Future Past: An Exercise in Horror” which starts off with:
“Assume tomorrow has already come and gone
and you now inhabit no more than a string of
damaged yesterdays…”
to the emergence of technology in “Human/Technological Dimensions on the Eve of the Bimillennium,” which scars us to the point when we end up asking ourselves:
“When did we
become so small
we can no longer
touch the moon?”
The flash fiction, “Dream of the Burmese Gardener,” is a surreal account of how galaxies are created. Mr. Saketa, one of the lascivious inhabitants of a certain manor house, carefully fashions “the first planet in the universe to be composed entirely of dead aphids.”
“Refugee” is a tight, meditative piece about the subjectivity of reality. Oh, and it doesn’t fail to entertain with juxtapositions like: “the mayor’s beautiful daughter…or is it the chimp?”
Conditions of Sentient Life is beautifully capped by “Gravity Drives the Blood and Bends the Light” which declares that
“…when we reach up it calls us down…”
These lines ring in the mind, and they ring hard.
October 19, 2025
A collection of poems, predominantly sci-fi, on us and on others with whom we share the classification of 'sentient.'
Sometimes a title sounds as much like a question as it is a statement. Such is it with this one – and whatever its complete answer is, part of it is the admission that we sentients can be a miserable bunch, largely due to a collective effort towards that end. The titular poem, in its interstellar setting, voices this better and with more damnation:
The human condition
does not vary that much
from one system to the next,
from white sun to yellow
or red...nor does the alien
condition for that matter.
[...]
We are no more than animals
who have learned to assemble
and dissemble volatile hearts,
our stories and lies and creeds,
to create worlds internecine
as the storms that rail within. (p. 42)
Us sentients, be we us humans alone or catalogued in tandem with whoever others are out there, are by necessity the makers of our own destiny – and as a rule we're not really that good at managing this privilege. Dystopian thoughtstreams cover a substantial amount of this collection: Besides the titular poem one finds the tripartite Future Present/Past/Perfect cycle, 'The Evening News on the Morning After the Final Solution,' 'The Bimillennial Blues' and how it leads into 'Human/Technological Dimensions on the Eve of the Bimillennium,' and 'Stars May Rise to Hell and Back,' the despairingly dark poem that begins this collection –
Waves can break a rock to shore
and never mean a bloody thing.
Stars may rise to hell and back,
and hunger has no mouth to sing. (p. 7)
Yet, there is more – to us. If all we could obtain under our own direction is failure, then we would fade by Darwin's realisation. We haven't, so we must have been more to get to where we are, and miserable as we also are, we must be more since our anthill grows as opposed to fades. Conditions of Sentient Life has dedicated well over a third of itself to what we didn't get right, but beyond this there is fortunately more.
The lust for exploration, the aim for the unknown, the demand to find what isn't merely comfortable and to conquer yourself in the face of it, is a staple of this penmanship. Its inclusion is mandatory, here in the form of two poems from the joint 'Mutant Rain Forest' venture with Robert Frazier – one of which is unique to this collection: 'Visionary Madness in the Mutant Rain Forest' – as well as the deservedly lauded 'A Spacer's Life Is Ice and Fire.'
Inward through parsecs
of always changing light
and chill blue slumber,
awakening on worlds
where sense or passion
claimed my heady flight,
yet only in the passing.
So very green at first
until the rush of night
paced my spacer's soul. (pp. 40-41)
'The Veracity of Imagination' is a part of another recurrency – according to this reviewer it's one of the foremost among them – which is the poet's dedications to creativity and the imagination. It is perhaps one of the most important components in our sentience and our management of it, since we, the makers of our destiny, are in demand of inductive thought. It is our main resource for resolutions, it is where we find the alternatives that prevents us from fading. 'Poet's Prayer' is a more light-hearted work on the same theme, but the wish central to it, that this resource never dries out, is very much a wish worth humbling oneself to retain.
Other poems deal with dreams, of freedom, of in-the-moment contentedness, of being at odds with the conditions as perceived by our co-sentients – there is even a poem on Hesseistic existentialism, 'Death of the Steppenwolf.'
Two halves do not a whole contrive,
Not when they cut each other deep,
Not when they rail constantly
And leave me soulless without sleep. (p. 20)
Of course, no chapbook can cover the entire sentient experience, but neither could it have if it rivalled Ulysses' page count. Our individualism renders it an impossible task. Nor does Conditions of Sentient Life attempt any such thing. It perceives us inductively, from angles largely untrodden or even impossible – a blessing of speculative literature is how it can asses us by what can only ever be imagined figments; a blessing of poetry is how beautifully and elegantly we can be reimagined.
But most of all, this reviewer sees Conditions of Sentient Life as an answer to the 'Poet's Prayer.'
Give me a little silk thread
and safe passage round the Horn.
But don't forget to make the seas flame.
And leave a daylight moon upon the sky. (p. 22)
Feed our imagination. Make us more.
Sometimes a title sounds as much like a question as it is a statement. Such is it with this one – and whatever its complete answer is, part of it is the admission that we sentients can be a miserable bunch, largely due to a collective effort towards that end. The titular poem, in its interstellar setting, voices this better and with more damnation:
The human condition
does not vary that much
from one system to the next,
from white sun to yellow
or red...nor does the alien
condition for that matter.
[...]
We are no more than animals
who have learned to assemble
and dissemble volatile hearts,
our stories and lies and creeds,
to create worlds internecine
as the storms that rail within. (p. 42)
Us sentients, be we us humans alone or catalogued in tandem with whoever others are out there, are by necessity the makers of our own destiny – and as a rule we're not really that good at managing this privilege. Dystopian thoughtstreams cover a substantial amount of this collection: Besides the titular poem one finds the tripartite Future Present/Past/Perfect cycle, 'The Evening News on the Morning After the Final Solution,' 'The Bimillennial Blues' and how it leads into 'Human/Technological Dimensions on the Eve of the Bimillennium,' and 'Stars May Rise to Hell and Back,' the despairingly dark poem that begins this collection –
Waves can break a rock to shore
and never mean a bloody thing.
Stars may rise to hell and back,
and hunger has no mouth to sing. (p. 7)
Yet, there is more – to us. If all we could obtain under our own direction is failure, then we would fade by Darwin's realisation. We haven't, so we must have been more to get to where we are, and miserable as we also are, we must be more since our anthill grows as opposed to fades. Conditions of Sentient Life has dedicated well over a third of itself to what we didn't get right, but beyond this there is fortunately more.
The lust for exploration, the aim for the unknown, the demand to find what isn't merely comfortable and to conquer yourself in the face of it, is a staple of this penmanship. Its inclusion is mandatory, here in the form of two poems from the joint 'Mutant Rain Forest' venture with Robert Frazier – one of which is unique to this collection: 'Visionary Madness in the Mutant Rain Forest' – as well as the deservedly lauded 'A Spacer's Life Is Ice and Fire.'
Inward through parsecs
of always changing light
and chill blue slumber,
awakening on worlds
where sense or passion
claimed my heady flight,
yet only in the passing.
So very green at first
until the rush of night
paced my spacer's soul. (pp. 40-41)
'The Veracity of Imagination' is a part of another recurrency – according to this reviewer it's one of the foremost among them – which is the poet's dedications to creativity and the imagination. It is perhaps one of the most important components in our sentience and our management of it, since we, the makers of our destiny, are in demand of inductive thought. It is our main resource for resolutions, it is where we find the alternatives that prevents us from fading. 'Poet's Prayer' is a more light-hearted work on the same theme, but the wish central to it, that this resource never dries out, is very much a wish worth humbling oneself to retain.
Other poems deal with dreams, of freedom, of in-the-moment contentedness, of being at odds with the conditions as perceived by our co-sentients – there is even a poem on Hesseistic existentialism, 'Death of the Steppenwolf.'
Two halves do not a whole contrive,
Not when they cut each other deep,
Not when they rail constantly
And leave me soulless without sleep. (p. 20)
Of course, no chapbook can cover the entire sentient experience, but neither could it have if it rivalled Ulysses' page count. Our individualism renders it an impossible task. Nor does Conditions of Sentient Life attempt any such thing. It perceives us inductively, from angles largely untrodden or even impossible – a blessing of speculative literature is how it can asses us by what can only ever be imagined figments; a blessing of poetry is how beautifully and elegantly we can be reimagined.
But most of all, this reviewer sees Conditions of Sentient Life as an answer to the 'Poet's Prayer.'
Give me a little silk thread
and safe passage round the Horn.
But don't forget to make the seas flame.
And leave a daylight moon upon the sky. (p. 22)
Feed our imagination. Make us more.
December 24, 2008
Bruce Boston doesn't do a bad poem.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews