"Poetry shares something with science fiction and fantasy that much literary fiction tends to reject: a willingness, even an eagerness, to inhabit the non-human other."

Always Beginning

Ursula K. Le Guin’s poetry reveals a writer humbled by the craft.

BY DAVID NAIMON

"Poetry shares something with science fiction and fantasy that much literary fiction tends to reject: a willingness, even an eagerness, to inhabit the non-human other. From Francis Ponge’s poetry of objects to the animal poems of Lucille Clifton, from Tolkien’s ancient tree-like Ents to China Miéville’s double-mouthed Ariekans who cannot lie, point of view is not reserved for human beings in these genres. In fact, the way Merlyn educates the future king, Arthur, in T.H. White’s Sword in the Stone (1938), a book Le Guin considered marvelous and important, is by turning him into various creatures and objects. It is this fellow feeling, this seeing from the perspective of otherness, that one grows from. So Far So Good tells us that regardless of whether we learn that lesson during our lives, we will enact it in our deaths. Like every other creature, our bodies will return to the elements, and our souls will return to the mystery. Le Guin’s emotions run the gamut in this collection—from nostalgia to fear to humor—but one feels most of all her desire to welcome, to embrace, to participate in the cycle of life and death, as in these lines from 'Come to Dust':

Come down to earth as leaves in autumn

to lie in the patient rot of winter.

Rise again in spring’s green fountains.

Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen

to fall in blessing.

                                      All earth’s dust

has been life, held soul, is holy."