The Heartbeat of the Universe

This collection is an excellent sampling of modern speculative poetry. I read a lot of it (but I often don't get around to reading the poems from these particular magazines) and was pleased to find many familiar names here—people who are well-established in the field and whom I enjoy. However, I pleasantly jotted down some new names I'm completely unfamiliar with to hopefully delve into some other time!

The best thing about this book is the sheer variety of poems within. Many different themes are explored in different styles. Will every poem in this collection be to your taste? Absolutely not, but that's the beauty of it. As the editor says in the foreword—these poems contain multitudes, braiding themes and ideas in a truly refreshing way.

If there's any nitpick I have, it's the somewhat limited selection. But this is of course a feature and deliberate limitation of the book—when you make a best-of of specific magazines you are of course limited to the poems from those magazines. I would love to see another modern poetry anthology from Interstellar Flight Press (probably the single best publisher in the field right now!) focusing on a bigger variety of voices, no repeated authors, across many different magazines, to truly showcase the state of modern speculative poetry.

Favorites:
- ARCHEOLOGISTS UNCOVER BONES, BIFOCALS, A TRICYLE by Steven Withrow
- BILLETS-DOUX by Brittany Hause
- ANSIBLES by Ursula Whitcher
- PACKING FOR THE AFTERLIFE by Mary Soon Lee
- MUSIC REMEMBERS by Ashok K. Banker

My sincerest thanks to Interstellar Flight Press for the ARC!