Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry

Shadows and Light Moving on Water: On Samuel R. Delany

Shadows and Light Moving on Water On Samuel R. Delany 1. Samuel R. Delany has written several experiments with the (non)form of the essay that he calls chrestomathies, “collections of [numbered] textual fragments whose numerous inter relations the reader must actively trace out in order to gather them up into a resonant whole” (as critic Ken James describes them in the introduction to Delany’s collection Longer Views: Extended Essays). One of the earlier of these is titled “Shadows.” A later piece, a sequel of sorts to “Shadows,” is titled “Shadow and Ash.” Consider this my formal hommage to Delany, a tribute in manner as well as matter. 2. chres.to.ma.thy n, pl -thies (NL chrestomathia, fr. Gk chrestomatheia , fr. chrestos useful ⫹ mathemein to learn—more at mathematical ) (1832) 1: a selection of passages compiled as an aid to learning a language 2: a volume of selected passages or stories of an author (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary). This is my attempt, tentative, partial in all senses, at an aid to learning the language of Samuel R. Delany. 3. Two or three things I know about Samuel R. Delany . He is black, though light-skinned enough to pass for white in his youth ful wanderings through the Civil Rights era South. He is gay , though once married to the marvelous poet Marilyn Hacker and father with her of an adult daughter . He is a science fiction write , as well as a memoirist, an “anti-por nographer,” and a critic and theorist both cultural and literar y. He is dyslexic, which means that he has had to wrestle with language all his life: language’ s otherness has always been quite literal for him. 132 Delany is one of the best-known neglected writers in America . Within the field of science fiction he is almost a monumen Dhalgren has sold millions of copies, though it was never on any mainstream best-seller list. Outside the realms of science fictio and lately of queer studies, he is almost unknown. When I told her that I was writing this essay, a close friend who is a voracious reader of fiction expressed great relief about never havin heard of Delany when I explained that he is a science fictio writer. “Sometimes worlds exist under your eyes and you never see” (Babel-17). 4. Many “literar y” writers and readers don’ t consider science fiction to be literature at all, and see no reason why they shoul read it or even acknowledge its existence. They think it’ s for pimply boys who can’ t get dates. In fact, most science fictio isn’t literature: but then, neither is most literary fiction. And De lany has had many, many dates. 5. A paradox: science fiction critics often dismiss Delany s work as too “intellectual,” too “difficult” (mainstream critics usuall simply ignore it). Y et he is also a ver y popular writer. Dhalgren, one of his most “difficult” novels, is also one of his best selling Delany isn’t terribly difficult. But one does have to think t read him, and some people resent that. Delany engages ideas, but he also tells stories, creates characters, and paints landscapes . He is a world maker, and in his work idea-spinning and storytelling are aspects of one another. 6. I am a poet; Delany is a fiction write . But I have lear ned as much from him about how to write and how to read as I have from any poet, including a reminder that reading is a for m of writing oneself into a text and that writing is a for m of reading a potential text. Delany has frequently acknowledged his debts to poetr y. He has also written an extended and wide-ranging meditation on Hart Crane’s The Bridge (“Atlantis Rose . . . ,” in Longer Views), as well as “Atlantis: Model 1924” (published in Atlantis : Three Tales), a vividly imagined meeting between Delany’s father and the poet on the Brooklyn Bridge, an encounter that revolves around misunderstandings and miscommunications: 133 the two, occupying the same space at the same time, never meet at all. There is a conver gence between the position of poetr y and the position of science fiction in contempora y American culture . Both are highly mar ginal discourses. Poetr y has a great deal of residual cultural cachet (as attested by its use as an allpurpose honorific...