Tanith Lee
A rose by any other name
Would get the blame
For being what it is –
The colour of a kiss,
The shadow of a flame.
A rose may earn another name,
So call it love;
So call it love I will,
And love is like the sea,
Which changes constantly,
And yet is still
The same.
Poetic excerpt from Tanith Lee’s ‘The Silver Metal Lover’.
I must confess, I was never a Tanith Lee fan. I’ve always been a picky reader and tend to stick to authors I know until I’ve read everything. But I might have become a fan of Tanith’s. I know she was on a list of authors to read if you like Marion Zimmer Bradley (which I do, obsessively), and I’ve recently discovered that she wrote lesbian fiction under the name Esther Garber, even though she wasn’t a lesbian. At one time, when I was not a Christian, I read quite a bit of lesbian fiction. So I could have been a Tanith Lee fan— and perhaps I still will become one, once I start reading her work.
I found out about Tanith Lee’s death from a post at Poet’s United. According to Rosemary Nissen-Wade, who wrote the post, Tanith Lee was a poet but her work was hard to find online. She has poems scattered throughout her books. I don’t know if Lee ever published a book of her poetry or whether her poems were published in poetry journals or science-fiction/fantasy magazines that publish poems. But I believe that even if her poems were only published embedded in her fiction, she is still a poet.
Tanith Lee’s web page: http://www.tanith-lee.com/
Tanith Lee at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanith_Lee
Tanith Lee obituary at SFWA: https://www.sfwa.org/2015/05/in-memoriam-tanith-lee/
Tanith Lee Tribute at Poet’s United: http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-living-dead_29.html
