Up-date, January 2013: Hippocampus Press will soon publish a new paperback edition of this book that will include additional poems and corrections to the first edition.
This is an amazing book, a wonderful tome. There is much in it that may be consider'd dull or boring, of course; but that is merely a matter of taste, and I love poetry in most of its manifestations. Even Lovecraft's Juvenilia shews a boy who had an active brain and questing soul. Here is the very early poem, "On the Vanity of Human Ambition":
Apollo, chasing Daphne, gain's his prize
But lo! she turn'd to wood before his eyes.
More modern swains at golden prizes aim,
And ever strive some worldly thing to claim.
Yet 'tis the same as in Apollo's case,
For, once attain'd, the purest gold seems base.
All that men seek 's unworthy of the quest,
Yet seek they will, and never pause for rest.
True bliss, methinks, a man can only find
In virtuous life, & cultivated mind.
How fascinating, that poem, written by a boy who wou'd go on to live a life that one may call virtuous and cultivated. But it is section two of the book that thrills me, as an obsess'd fan of Lovecraftian horror. Lovecraft's supernatural poems have been published by themselves in various editions, and a new modern edition of just his horror poetry is something I would love to see. Many of these poems are so haunting, so beautiful and strange. He was an unusual man with a singular mind. Some of the lines are superbly macabre, such as these from the opening of "The Eidolon":
When flesh upon its earthly bed
Sprawls corpse-like and untenanted--
Vacant of soul, which freely flies
Thro' worlds unknown to waking eyes.
The horned moon above the spire
With ghastly grace was crawling high'r,
And in the pallid struggling beams
Grinn'd memories of ancient dreams.
Some poems found expression, later, as weird fiction, such as "The House," which in time was re-imagined as "The Shunned House." Some of the verse sounds very like Poe to me, and this would be natural, for a writer who so admired Poe's poetry and tales. An example is the opening of "The City":
It was golden and splendid,
The City of light;
A vision suspended
In deeps of the night;
A region of wonder and glory, whose temples were marble and white.
What can be more evocative than ye opening of "The Ancient Track"?
There was no hand to hold me back
That night I found the ancient track
Over the hill, and strained to see,
The fields that teased my memory.
And the sonnets are, for the most part, exquisite. "Fungi from Yuggoth" is a work of which I never tire (and it may eventually be available in an annotated/illustrated edition!!!). The first three sonnets of the "Fungi" are fascinating in that they are interrelated and suggest that Lovecraft may have begun the cycle with the idea of having it tell a cohesive tale. This seems reinforced by that wee prose segment known as "The Book," which is a prose retelling of these first sonnets in the cycle. Some scholars have try'd to shew that "Fungi from Yuggoth" does indeed tell a story, has a consistent plot line -- but it doesn't.
The Fantasy and Horror poetry ends at page 83, and the book continues to page 469 with poetry and many additional pages of notes, &c. Poetry was a natural aesthetic expression of H. P. Lovecraft, in which he express'd his mind with fancy, opinion, and friendship. Many of the poems were found in letters to friends and not in any way intended for publication; but how wonderful that this magnificent and never-tiring editor, S. T. Joshi, has found them all -- or most of them, and given us this work in a superbly edited edition. It's a great book.
