Lovecraftian Poetry...

JOSHI, S.T. (Ed.), The Ancient Track – The Complete Poetical Works of H.P. Lovecraft, Night Shade Books, San Francisco CA, 2001.

Octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine and upper board titles and decoration; 557pp. Very minor wear. Dustwrapper. Near fine.

Funny the way the world works – HPL has a birthday and I get the presents. This week not only did I score a copy of Black Wings of Cthulhu 3, but also a copy of Night Shade Books’ The Ancient Track – The Complete Poetical Works of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by S.T. Joshi. Serendipity-doo-dah!

COLLINS, Tom (Ed.), A Winter Wish and Other Poems by H.P. Lovecraft, Whispers Press, Ann Arbor MI, 1977.

Octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine-title and upper board decoration; 190pp. Number 93 of a limited edition run of 200 copies. Very minor wear; signed in ink on the limitations page by the editors. Dustwrapper. Near fine in a buckram slipcase.

This isn’t the first compilation of HPL's verse that I’ve been able to add to my collection of Lovecraftiana. Awhile ago, I picked up a copy of A Winter Wish and Other Poems by H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Tom Collins and issued by Whispers Press in 1977. With this new volume, I thought I’d trot out both books and write an overview, not only about Lovecraft as poet, but about Mythos-inspired poetry generally.

Some time back I wrote a review of the new Penguin Classics compilation of Clark Ashton Smith’s work. It contains quite a bit of his verse - probably too much - and suffers as a result. As I said then, the style of poetry to which he aspired was hackneyed and trite, outmoded in his current milieu and therefore dated. Too, it reeked of the adolescent, pushing the envelope of melodrama and often, blithely crossing that line. There are many things that we leave behind us in our childhood; our tortured, over-emotional poetry is one of them. Obviously CAS didn’t share this view.

“O Love, thou Judas of the martyred soul!

Thou pandar to the painted harlot, Life!

The rankest lies wherewith thy heart is rife

Too fulsomely illume thy lips' red scroll,

Whereon is writ the secret of our dole,

Of mortal woes immortalized by thee,

And wisdom, through thine olden perfidy,

Drawn back to life from some Lethean shoal.

Away! I know the weariness and fever

Kisses compounded of the world's old dust

With fire that feeds the seventh hell for ever!

The grave shall keep a gentler couch than thine,

Though round my heart the roots of nettles twine,

Wreathed in the ancient attitude of lust”

-“Amor Aeternalis”

Robert E. Howard was also fond of versifying and his collected works are dotted by the experiments which he carried out with the form. These are, as you’d expect, grim paeans to destroyed and forgotten empires, extolling and lamenting their faded glories. In the context of his other writing, they stand up well, lending shade and nuance to his oeuvre. I doubt, however, that you’d ever buy a slim volume of his verse: you can have too much of a doom-laden thing.

“The Black Door gapes and the Black Wall rises;

Twilight gasps in the grip of Night.

Paper and dust are the gems man prizes –

Torches toss in my waning sight.

Drums of glory are lost in the ages,

Bare feet fail on a broken trail –

Let my name fade from the printed pages;

Dreams and visions are growing pale.”

-From “Lines Written in the Realization that I Must Die”

The main difference between HPL and his contemporaries in terms of their verse, is that HPL didn’t simply try to carry on his Yog-Sothery in a metered format; much of his poetry is written as a response to things that happened to him in the course of his daily life. He wrote poems inspired by the Great War, upon reading about Robert E. Lee, to his friends on their birthdays and at Christmas, and as satirical comments on world and other affairs. He experimented with form and style, working with poetical formats to test their limitations. Like much in his literary canon, there was a sense of analysis and experimentation, not a simple tendency towards pastiche.

“Whilst you invade with prattling joy

The chrome-blue swamp oneiroscopick,

And like a multivalent boy

Divagate some bidextrous topick;

Whilst, as I say, you thus amuse

A modern mind with Eliot leanings,

Pray laugh not if your Grandpa choose

A simpler rhyme, and one with meanings.

We old folk know, of course, the world

Is but a chaos frail and vicious;

A very rubbish-vortex, hurl’d

In shapes delusive and capricious;

But split me, Child, if we can mend

Our stale empirick imperfection,

Or keep from making outlines blend

The way they do before dissection!

And so tonight with pen in hand

To wish the blessings of the season,

I’m curst if I can well command

The mode in analytick reason!

I can’t take Santa Claus apart,

In shreds denigrate with strabismus,

So Child, I’ll quit the quest of art,

And wish an Old Man’s Merry Christmas!”

-[Christmas Greeting to Frank Belknap Long]

Like his contemporaries in the Lovecraft Circle, his taste ran towards the archaic and the outmoded. Not for Lovecraft the joyous springing and capering of Walt Whitman! Nor the mind-numbingly footnoted, rhizomous growths of T.S. Eliot. HPL preferred the “despised pastoral” and valued adherence to meter and rhyme, things that contemporary poets were negligently disposing of, to his view. True to form, A Winter Wish begins with a quartet of connected essays extolling the virtues of what HPL considered ‘proper’ poetry, in the face of the upheavals which the modernist wave of authorship was creating around him. Like “The Supernatural Horror in Literature” HPL established a road map to the form, on the basis of his own experimentation, before cruising ahead.

“XXXI. The Dweller

It had been old when Babylon was new;

None knows how long it slept beneath that mound,

Where in the end our questing shovels found

Its granite blocks and brought it back to view.

There were vast pavements and foundation-walls,

And crumbling slabs and statues, carved to shew

Fantastic beings of some long ago

Past anything the world of man recalls.

And then we saw those stone steps leading down

Through a choked gate of graven dolomite

To some black haven of eternal night

Where elder signs and primal secrets frown.

We cleared a path – but raced in mad retreat

When from below we heard those clumping feet.”

-From “The Fungi from Yuggoth”

That’s not to say that HPL didn’t bring the Mythos to poetry: “The Fungi from Yuggoth” is an extended poetical narrative in many parts which lays out a horrible patchwork of his dreamlike imaginings. However, the instances of such material are fairly few and far between. A lot of his verse is of the “occasional” kind, that is arising from a particular occasion wherein the poem would be read aloud as part of the celebration – for example “The Members of the Men’s Club of the First Universalist Church of Providence, R.I., to Its President, About to Leave for Florida on Account of His Health”. It doesn’t get much more particular than that! Other poems are private musings and reflections such as “On Cheating the Post Office”. From this, you might surmise that HPL had little of world-shaking importance to impart with his poetry and, on balance, you’d be right. I would say though, that his poetry is a definite window into his psyche and persona, and adds much to consider about the man, quite apart from his body of prose work.

“The law, despite its show of awe, a soft thing to infract is,

And crime, mere theory in its time, too soon is put in practice!

My soul, now on its downward roll, in crafty scheming romps on,

And ne’er will rest till I can best a Bickford or a Thompson.

-[On Cheating the Post Office]

Like many things about HPL’s work, his poetry stands as a rejection of the status quo and an unfulfilled wish to return to a different – and to his mind “better” – way. Lovecraft obviously had a spiritual affinity to the Augustan poetry of Alexander Pope and his coterie, with its almost atavistic urge towards Classical reinvention and its slavish adherence to meter and rhyme. Modern poetry wasn’t to his taste. Unfortunately, as in most elements of HPL’s life, the world is what it is, and, though he strived valiantly, he couldn’t completely escape it. It shows a degree of astuteness therefore, that he didn’t depend upon his poetry for his income and stuck to his, more saleable, prose offerings.

Most noticeably however, is the fact that HPL had a sense of humour about his poetry. Whether writing to friends or savaging some current topic of discussion, he has a sense of proportion and a self-awareness which is leavening and appealing. Not for him the passionate melodrama of CAS, or the doom-laden negativity of REH: poetry, was a means of communication, along with a sense of discipline, and he used it as a gift to others and a means of affirming his personal relationships. Never wealthy, it seems that he gave the gift of poetry as his seasonal contributions and offerings at social events: in many ways, it was a truer signal of his affections than any other present might have been.

In summary, if you’re looking for creeping horrors from beyond the edge of the universe, or insidious cult practises from the darker parts of the planet, stick with HPL’s prose fiction; most fans aren’t going to find much of value within his poetry, no matter how garish the cover art might be. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for an insight into the private life of Lovecraft and a sense of who he was and where he came from, you might find much here to enjoy.