The fifty poems that make up this collection -- some reprints, many seen here for the first time -- describe an archeological arc.

The first, "Dig," sets the tone -- cautionary, almost threatening.  There is a warning here:

as the god clouds gather,

storming in their beds.

As the title hints, "The Slums of Atlantis" sets up the expectations of Atlantis' past glories like ninepins and promptly knocks them over.  It begins humorously, supposing philosopher dogs and waters privileged by association with the magnificent, then intensifies its nascent irony in contemplating the fate of the fictional city's "exploited breed."

"Stonehenge Revisited" is a brief image of the "devout and lunatic," an impossible snapshot taken by moonlight. 

"In the Coarse Morn" shows a kingdom in decline, a hint of the desert encroaching on what was once green and rich, and the effect it has on the spirit of a city.  In the end, this is a city grown so harsh and cruel that one wishes for the catastrophe that will make it clean -- a spiritual, ecological and social holocaust, quick or slow.

Destruction is slower, and more peaceful (although insidious) in "The Death of Statues," in which we see the "slow rot/creeping up their legs," and the passivity of those who cannot fight their deaths, and have no means or wish to.

With "In One's Perception of Light" the theme shifts to a more personal kind of archaeology -- that of memory, and the constructs of childhood.  "Memory's Refrain" continues this: "unfurling like smoke," memory fills all spaces and becomes, for all intents and purposes, reality.

"When Clock is Egg" is more abstract than the previous poems, and probably my favorite, although I do not pretend to understand it.  It seems to speak of the hatching of time, and the ripeness and potential of "this ground," from which "any reality could be born" -- whether the ground is solid or ethereal, real or imagined.

"Shells: The Next Generation" paints an unsentimental picture of parents helpless under the weight of memory, and of children as a kind of parasite, stripping the shore of shells.  Although the beach is remade every day, it will always be stripped before the "lone beachcomber" can find the shells he seeks; like Sisyphus, he will never complete the task that is his collection.

"Heavy Weather" strikes a lighthearted note, imagining gravity that changes "like the weather," sometimes striking us down and sometimes letting us fly.

The Bradbury-esque "Origami Rockets" counters "Shells: The Next Generation" with a childlike, idyllic vision of travel to the moon.

"Sun People" and  "Knife People" are "what if" poems that depict, respectively, a hot world, stuck in a cruise ship summer, and a sharp, damaged, bloodied world.  The latter seems facile until the last lines: "when you are sharp/you have to cut."

"In the Cluttered Attic of the Mind's Sensations" returns to the theme of the archeology of memory -- or the surreal housekeeping of the dream-life. It's an appropriate segue into a series of poems that use the name and images of Dali and other artists: this set begins with "Revealing Their Eyes" -- which traces Dali's and Van Gogh's paths to the same conclusion, and ends with "Each Note Waiting: images of the static, expectant moment before the explosion of creativity or history."

"Visions of the Blue Clone" and "Shadow Light" are love poems and introduce a science-fictional element to the collection; science flirts with fantasy in "Of Glass, Of Fire, Of Elements Abundantly Defined" -- a twisted, mad-tea-party look at the periodic table.  And with "Future Fourth" and "Mandates for the Fifth Enclave" we segue into an archaeology of the future -- respectively, a "hellish life" where the fireworks of the fourth of July are a mockery, and a drowned world where preserving history, if not people, is the only hope. History "is razed" in "In the Sweltering Ruins of the Old City," reminiscent of Bradbury's "The Smile."

Aliens are violently curious in "Under Alien Observation," and (perhaps) simply disturbing in "Oblong Creatures" (although the last line has a suspiciously "To Serve Man" ring about it). The alien is not the villain in "When the Alien Sat Down Next to Me," which is unexpectedly sad and more so for its honesty.

"Star Wanderers" strikes a note of hope, positing that once the human race is sufficiently integrated it can finally "consider/leaving the Earth behind/and wandering to the stars." "Take Five on Centauri Three" (written with Marge Simon) supposes the evolution of jazz in space, played not only by humans but aliens: "Old Earth's gift to the stars." And in the final poem, "The Dimensional Rush of Relative Primes," it seems the limits of the physical are largely transcended; Earth is not a place but an "instant," where an entity who may be human, alien, or something beyond temporal definition perches and waits to teach "her children's children/about the wages of space."

NOTE: Half the revenues from sales of Shades Fantastic are being donated to the Rhysling Endowment Fund of the Science Fiction Poetry Association.