This is a supplement to the video which can be found here.
What I said in the video, I truly meant. I do love this story, I did read it when I was a young and it was a major factor in my subsequent love of Science-Fiction. Not only is it a great story, it is a great example of how science-fiction can use exaggerated versions of reality in order to talk about a myriad of real-world subjects at once.
The Martian Chronicles is filled with such as Bradbury is quite good at them. And yes, some of the stories in that book aren’t nearly as good as others. And yes, that one story did give him a lot of trouble. Interestingly, there’s a story in The Illustrated Man entitled “The Other Foot” which is, in many ways, the sequel story to “Way in the Middle of Air” but in a different book entirely.
The Illustrated Man is filled with such oddities as it is simply a short story collection and the framing device is patently ignored after the first couple stories. It is also full of some really good stories worth a reading, but don’t even begin to try and place them together in the same universe. It simply doesn’t work.
As for the poem, I do like it as dark as it is. I don’t recall any other works of Sara Teasdale, but maybe I should try and find some sometime to see how her other work fairs out.
As for any naysayers who would argue that the poem isn’t science-fiction, well, I would point out that the narrative of the poem is that of a world in the future in which humanity has been wiped off the Earth by war.
If it were anything but a poem, there would be no questioning that synopsis was describing a work of science-fiction. Genre isn’t dependant on length or even style, it’s dependent on subject. If your work, whatever it is, is about magic and the like, then it’s a Fantasy. If your work is about terrifying your audience with frightful imagery, then it’s a Horror. So, whatever the work is, even a poem, talking about the future and technologies is Science-Fiction.
Final thought. If you want to see something rather creepy, but quite well made, there is an animated short adaptation of the Ray Bradbury short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” made in the CCCP that can be found here.