Thoughtful readers,

It has been a month for thinking about poetry. I have a new essay up at SFWA's Planetside blog this week: STEM and Leaf: Writing Math and Science Poetry. There's even an audio version of the post! I worked really hard to choose example poems that showed the different approaches one can take to publishing science poetry. Amusingly, I also wound up with a range of different creatures: you'll find a mushroom, a kitten, and a capybara.

The yearly readers' polls for Analog and Asimov's are live. Please take a moment to vote for "Beyond the Standard Model" and "Fine Print" if you enjoyed them. (Reply to this message if you need a review copy of "Fine Print"!)

In more grief-ridden poetry musings, I've been thinking about Renée Nicole Good's poem On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs. For five years, the Twin Cities were--not my home, but my closest city, the place where I went to museums and hiked past waterfalls and ate Ethiopian food and bought IKEA furniture and admired my friends' estate-sale finds. I'm terrified and angry and scared for the Cities, my friends, their people. We held a vigil for Renée Good in Ann Arbor. I'm glad we were able to remember her with twisty, complicated poetry.

Here's Kosmas. He's a good companion, if you need to rest between marches.

Yours,

Ursula.