A Catalogue of the Further Suns

by F.J. Bergmann

As I moved through A Catalogue of the Further Suns I found myself, as a member of the human species, alien-ized. I found myself alien-ating. I found myself in a labyrinth of mirrors that reflected back and forth among the histories of colonization and mass extinction. While reading these poems I slipped, for fractions of fractions of moments, just the tiniest distance outside of my human brain--and observed it from without--something I've wanted to do my whole life. This speculative poetry brings to mind Norman Dubie's The Spirit Tablets at God Lake, and Danielle Pafunda's Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies, and the wormholes within wormholes in William Blake's mythopoetic--in other words, this book is a profoundly worthwhile WTF.

— Sarah Vap, judge of the 2016 Poetry Chapbook Competition

Genres: Poetry

35 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2017

About the author

Jeannie Bergmann, a poet, science-fiction writer, artist, and web designer, maintains madpoetry.org, a public-service poetry site for Madison, WI. Journals in which her poems appear include Analog, Asimov’s Science Fiction, North American Review, Riddled with Arrows, Right Hand Pointing, Silver Blade, and Spectral Realms.

She has won the 2017 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook contest, the 2015 Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award for the Long Poem, the WFOP 65th Anniversary Poetry Contest, the 2013 SFPA Elgin Chapbook Award, the 2012 Rannu Fund for Speculative Literature Award for Poetry, Heartland Review’s 2011 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize, both the Theme and Poet’s Choice divisions of the 2010 WFOP Triad competition, received an International Publication Prize in the 2010 Atlanta Review contest, won the 2009 Tapestry of Bronze contest, and won the 2008 SFPA Rhysling Award for the Short Poem. She is the poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, the managing editor of MadHat Press, and the former editor of Star*Line, the journal of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. She has judged poetry contests and is available for readings and workshops.

Reviews

[Mary Soon Lee]

This chapbook has been nominated for the 2018 Elgin Award, an award that the author won in 2013. Although Bergmann writes both science fiction and fantasy poetry, this particular chapbook is on the science fiction end of the speculative spectrum. The poems describe different alien races, with the poems reinforcing each other to create a mood of profound otherness. Interactions between those narrating the poems (humans?) and the aliens are fraught with difficulties. I love Bergmann's precise phrasing, her breadth of imagination. Taken in moderate doses, I also appreciate the dark slant of these poems, but when I read more than a few in one sitting, I started to wish for more moments of lightness. Recommended ... but perhaps not all at once.

[Marne Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this amazing poetry chapbook, Bergmann takes us on an exploratory journey through space. Each poem details the civilization that explorers found on one particular planet. Often first contact changes things on the planet in some way. Other times the civilization has fallen on its own long before the observers get there. The tone is somewhat pessimistic, since almost every poem carries us through to the point of eventual downfall, but Bergmann’s language use is so precise and intricate that I was uplifted all the same. If you don’t usually like poetry, but you do like science fiction or post-apocalyptic literature, you should still give this one a try!