An Inheritance of Stone

by Leslie J. Anderson

From the introduction:

Some poems in this book gallop and kick. Some swerve elegantly like an escape pod caught in a gravity well. Other roll quiet as a child’s blanket. The words in these pages won’t seem the same each time you read them. They will be just what you were looking for, but nothing that you expected.
- Lucy A. Snyder, author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning poetry collection Chimeric Machines

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

First published September 26, 2013

About the author

Leslie J. Anderson’s writing has appeared in Asimov’s, Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and Apex, to name a few. She writes for the popular podcast The CryptoNaturalist. She also hosts and produces Cartoon Crosstalk Columbus for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus.

Her collection of poetry, An Inheritance of Stone, was released from Alliteration Ink and was nominated for an Elgin award. Poems from it have won 2nd place in the Asimov’s Reader’s Awards, and were nominated for Pushcart and Rhysling award.

Leslie has a Creative Writing MA from Ohio University and currently works as a marketing and communications manager for a financial consulting firm. She lives in Ohio in a small, white house beside a cemetery, with three good dogs and a Roomba.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good collection of poetry about horses and technology and families and relationships and other such weighty topics. Some are whimsical and some are quite serious and poignant and personal. I most enjoyed Twelve Ghosts of the Family, The Grand Adventures of the Space Cadet, Who is Sick, The Plagues, and Ponies and Rocketships, though I thought the whole book was worthwhile. In her very good introduction, Lucy A. Snyder puts it quite succinctly: "It is a true fact that consuming poetry makes you smart; reading really smart poetry makes your neurons absolutely light up. Your neurons will be glowing like a billion tiny lava lamps by the time you are done with this book."

[Jarod Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a reason that many of these poems first found publication in places like Asimov's, Apex, and Strange Horizons. There's a reason that, since this book was published, two of these poems were nominated for Rhysling Awards and one for a Pushcart Prize. There's a reason this is one of my favorite collection of speculative poetry. These poems are full of authentic human moments housed in surprising and fantastical contexts. I bought this book when it was first released and I continue to revisit it. I find that I'm impressed and a little disoriented (in a good way) every time I open the cover. I hope this is the first of many collections to come from Leslie J. Anderson.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the poems in this collection are elegant and graceful. Many are honest and blunt and true. Some are....a little amateurish! And yknow what! That’s fuckin’ okay!

The author obviously poured out her heart into this chapbook. She created something she wanted to share with the world, and she was vulnerable enough to do so. That’s commendable. And her sheer talent is obvious in poems like The Plague and Twelve Ghosts and more (listen, i’m a lazy reviewer and I didn’t want to flip back through and check titles when I really want to say “the diamond poem slaps” and “that Opportunity poem has me holding my own heart in my hands”)

But anyway, anyway. My biggest qualm with this book is the use of the word “gypsy” in the poem “my high school boyfriend is gay”....actually, that poem is a little uncomfortable for me to read. It reads as an overeager straight person showing off how good they are at being an ally. But back to it- the word is a slur for the Romani (or Roma) people of eastern Europe....I would love for there not to be casual slurs in the books i’m reading. Please research these things like that?

Anyway, still v enjoyable, good job, pls don’t use slurs

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up after meeting the author (she took my Worldbuilding workshop, as I recall) at a Science Fiction convention, where I heard her read. This was a wise choice on my part, but wish I'd taken the time to read the thing earlier.

This is a diverse collection, and my only quibble is that a couple of the transitions from one poem to the next are a little abrupt. On the other hand, I put exclamation points next to nine of them in the table of contents; which may be a recent record, for me.

The poems are polished. I'm a bit envious, in fact. They are also, frequently, unexpected. I cringed, literally, when I turned to the title "Ponies and Rocketships" but I was sold by this ending stanza:

What will actually happen is something like this:
you will get into the college of your choice, that you can't afford,
and the poet goddess of your department will call you practical
as if it's a contagious disease, and you will feel
like you have become a minor character.

Favorite lines, from "Waiting for a Letter": ...I hate // waiting for an important letter. I hate / thinking there is something out there / connected with me, in some flawed and significant way / that I do not know.

The list of those nine exclamed poems:

Ponies and Rocketships
Portrait
The Night Blooming Cereus
Diamonds
Locks
America
The Grand Adventures of the Space Cadet, Who is Sick
Waiting for a Letter
The Plagues (which got a double exclam)

[Anton Cancre · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to the author, this collection of poetry was almost named Ponies and Rocketships and, truth be told, that would have been a significantly more honest title. It lays out the twin obsessions with horses and space that most of the poems held herein deal with. And the Walt Whitman quote makes more sense in that context.

Now, if you did not close out this window already (chased away by the mention of poetry, ponies, space and Walt Whitman as much of the populace would be) there is a chance you may enjoy yourself with this book. Feel free to pat yourself on the back as you continue.

There are some really good poems here. One, “Ponies and Rocketships”, actually made me cry while contemplating the sense of wonder and disappointment and horror and hope at the heart of watching all those bright, expansive childhood dreams of entitlement die under the rampaging foot of reality. Or “New Year’s Resolution”, which manages to encapsulate that same sense of grandiose expectation in the face of mundane truth in the space of ten lines. Or “Diamonds”, a chilling, sparse metaphor for the objectification of beauty. God dam “Eulogy for Spirit and Opportunity!” Poems that carry the punch of personal experience, with just the right amount of metaphor to add depth and enough trust in the reader to believe they can understand without being spoonfed while going for the gonads as much as the funnybone. Poems that clearly could not have come from anyone else but this specific woman at this specific time in her life. That’s what I kill for in poetry.

However, the good ones are weighed down with a bit too much preachiness. A bit too much blunt force. Far too many that smack of the type of poetry you write to impress your college professors. Staid. Overwordy. Stiff. Lifeless. Lacking in personality. Bleh. Stuff like “America,” “The Nature of Gunfight” or “Stone” that only feed us what we’ve been told a thousand times over and without half the liveliness. Or the last stanza of “The Night Blooming Cereus”, that does everything except directly call the reader too stupid to understand everything that the rest of the poem was saying. And that isn’t getting into what I strongly suspect is a moment confusing the Vietnam War Memorial in DC with the Korean War Veterans Memorial (which does not have names, only statistics, listed).

Leslie doesn’t just have promise, she’s got chutzpah and power and grace. And when it shines, it can blot out the sunset and the hero on horseback riding into it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t shine nearly as much as I wanted it to here and there’s an awful lot of dust choking out the light.