In my quest to bone up on my weird poetry knowledge I decided to pull my copy of Lin Carter’s Dreams from R’lyeh off my shelf and give it a fair shake. I bought it years ago, when I worked at HPB, and flipped through it, but it didn’t quite click with me, so I put it on my shelf and allowed it to gather dust. Going back now, however, I find that it truly is a work of genius. I loved the eponymous sonnet cycle, which the blurb on the dustjacket describes as “…an affectionate and knowing imitation of Lovecraft’s own “Fungi from Yuggoth” sequence, skillfully written and cleverly connected (through its introductory notes) to the central matter of Mr. Carter’s own additions to the Mythos.” and have been enjoying the remaining odd rhymes and poetic tributes to the forebears of the modern weird tale. Actually, the titulary sonnet itself could be said to be a tribute of sorts to all the progenitors of the Cthulhu Mythos. I recognized references in the sonnet cycle to the tales of Clark Ashton Smith, whom I know Carter was a big fan of. There was mention of Ambrose Bierce’s Hastur and Carcosa (respectively), which were later appropriated by Robert W. Chambers and referenced haphazardly throughout his tales in The King in Yellow (1895) then latterly introduced into Mythos canon by Lovecraft in his 1931 tale The Whisperer in the Darkness. Lastly, there was mention of Byatis, the serpent-bearded deity created by Robert Bloch for his 1935 tale The Shambler From the Stars then cultivated by Ramsey Campbell for his own 1964 Mythos tale The Room in the Castle.
When I first tried to read the sonnet cycle I was trying to follow the rhyme and was frustrated by the odd scheme, which, not being well schooled in such things, I cannot quite place. The opening sonnet, Remembrances, goes abba cddc effegg. I found, however, that if, instead of reading each line individually, I just read it like prose and followed the narrative, it flows perfectly.
I am New England born, and home to me
Is ancient Kingsport on the Harbour side.
When I was very young my Father died
And so I came to Arkham by the sea
Where uncle Zorad and his servant, Jones,
Lived in the old house. He, my guardian,
Was a strange, silent, melancholy man
Given to dark old books and carven stones.
[edit from I. Remembrances, Dreams from R’lyeh, by Lin Carter, 1975 Arkham House]
Dreams from R’Lyeh is a sonnet cycle which, like Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth, loosely tells a story through macabre vignettes. As in Lovecraft’s cycle, the narrator uncovers some forbidding tomes which contain “eldritch” knowledge that leads him to strange worlds peopled by dark deities and their depraved followers bent on benighting the world and squelching mankind.
The narrator in Carter’s story is a youth named Wilbur Nathaniel Hoag, an Arkham man and the last of his line. Apparently Hoag disappeared and was presumed dead, leaving behind no clue as to his fate, save these lines of macabre poetry, now kept in the Manuscripts Collection of the Miskatonic Unversity. That being said, a few knowing hints in Carter’s preface tell the savvy Mythos fan all he needs to know about the fate of the young poet who, among other things, was a distant relation to Obed Marsh of Innsmouth.
One of my favorite poems, appropriately enough, turned out to be the one about the Dark Young of Shub Niggurath, entitled the Spawn of the Black Goat. Which is so tenebrous and Gothic in it’s Mythos-laden content, I really felt it captured some of the dark genius of the old Rhode Island gentleman himself.
They ride the night-wind when the Demon Star,
Over the dim Horizon burns bale-red,
Come from charnel-pits of the undead,
Nadir of nightmare, where the shoggoths are.
Now, till the light of morning-litten east
Bids them return to the unbottomed slime,
Freely they roam the darkling earth a time
And from fresh grave abominably feast.
[edit from XXVIII. Spawn of the Black Goat, Dreams from R’lyeh, by Lin Carter, 1975, Arkham House]
The remainder of the slim volume is taken up by Carter’s poetic oeuvre which is either in the style of or dedicated to the progenitors of the Weird Tale. There are tributes to Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, et al., all worthy of their dedicatees.
The sonnet cycle in particular made me curious as to what Carter’s Mythos fiction might be like, but from what I have read online about his Xothic stories, they’re purportedly just pale pastiches of Lovecraft & co.. Even so, if I ever see a used copy of the Chaosium collection The Xothic Legend Cycle in my travels, I may pick it up and give it a go.