Lin Carter’s “Dreams from R’lyeh”

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.

“Dreams from R’Lyeh” by Lin Carter (1975, Arkham House, cover art by Tim Kirk).

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.

The Xothic Legend Cycle: The Complete Mythos Fiction of Lin Carter (2006, Chaosium Inc.)

 

 

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Update 6/18/2018: Where did all the poems go?

It is with some regret that I have decided to pull down most of my poems from the Book of Shadows. I did this because it was pointed out to me by a friend who has experience in such matters that most publications will not take works that have been published previously or are available elsewhere, even if only on an obscure little blog like mine. Since I really want to get my work out into these journals where it might be seen by the appropriate audience, I decided not to take any chances and take down the ones I was considering sending out for consideration. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this may cause anyone interested in my work.

Update 06/06/2018

I have had a lot of stuff going on over the last month or so and many of my previous plans and aspirations have been put on hold till further notice. My friend Denisse, who was helping me put together Black Hymeneal has had some personal concerns which demand her time and attention so the work she was doing for me has been put indefinitely on hold, which may work out for me in the end since it has been suggested to me by some friends in the field that publishing a book before one has an audience to sell it to may be an unsound investment.

So, instead, I have been focusing on getting my work published. At present, there are five publications which I am waiting to hear back from. I have sent poems to The Audient Void, Vastarien, and Mirror Dance for consideration and I have also sent The Fell Fete to a UK publisher which is putting together a book in tribute to Clark Ashton Smith, and just last night I sent Gothilocks to the magazine Test Patterns: Creature Feature for their next issue. I’m not sure that I understood their requirements and may have just made a futile submission, but we’ll see what Fate has in store for me in that regard.

I have been thinking that I want to do some video recitals of my poetry for a proposed Youtube channel. In the interim, I have contacted my good friend Rand to see if he knows anyone who can perhaps shoot a video of a brief recital to post on here. I’d like it to be up close and personal, as if I were reading directly to the viewer and maybe even have a moody setting. I might even dress up a bit for it. We’ll see what we can pull off.

Update 6/14/2018:

Vastarien sent a very polite rejection notice recently for Moribond. I was surprised, since they emphasized their interest in poetry of the Park Barnitz persuasion, and Moribond is definitely within that charnel house genre, but I think my little poem may have less to do with the artful poesy of that doomed scribe and more to do with lurid Gothic broadside ballads. Either way, they didn’t take it.

“Thalia” to appear in Spectral Realms #9

In my recent effort to join in on the current weird poetry renaissance happening in the literary genre journals, I joined a few forums on Facebook that focused on the writing and publication thereof. I have enjoyed my interactions with other writers on these forums, some familiar, others not so much, but each one respectful of the other and willing to lend a hand or give a friendly word of encouragement to their fellow scribes.

That being said, it was on another forum dedicated to a particular poet (whose name I shall withhold for privacy reasons) where I saw a post announcing the acceptance of one of their poems to the journal Spectral Realms. I offered my congratulations and mentioned how I’d always longed to get published in that particular journal but always seem to miss the submission date. Besides, I said, I was terrified of having my work dismissed by editor S.T. Joshi, adding that I would be crushed if he deemed my work unworthy of appearing in that esteemed journal.

Enter a caption

Spectral Realms #1, Summer 2014.

 

My poet friend’s response was to submit something right now. Unsure of what I read, I asked whether that meant they were currently taking submissions. They replied in the affirmative. I then asked whether there was a link to follow and they said no, but would send me the contact info. I then got a private message with Mr. Joshi’s contact info and instructions to mention their name in the body of my message of introduction. I was stunned. I quickly popped in my USB with the manuscript for Black Hymeneal and pulled up my poem “Thalia”, which I had been considering for The Audient Void, copied and pasted it into a fresh document, which I then attached to an email for Mr. Joshi. Oh, and I forgot to mention that during all this my time on my library computer ended and I had to pull everything up all over again on an express computer 3 minutes before the library closed for the night!

It got through though, and Mr. Joshi was very complimentary, calling it “a fine poem”, but asked if I would either add punctuation myself or trust him to do so for me. I told him that punctuation was not my forte and that I trusted his judgment to make the appropriate adjustments. He seemed pleased. Now I await further instructions on how and when to submit my bio. If all goes as planned, this will be my first proper publication, aside from a vanity press publication of Tasty Little Muffins. I hope it shall be the first of many yet to come.

PS: For the curious, a recording of me reading “Thalia”, accompanied by moody music and images from my 2015 Gothic photo shoot by Hydroxia may be found in the “About” section of this blog.

PPS: I have decided to reveal the identity of the poet who so graciously facilitated the publishing of my poem as I think it’s only fair to give credit where credit is due: It was Miss Ashley Dioses, a young poetess out of California whose book Diary of a Sorceress (2017, Hippocampus Press) is definitely worth adding to your weird poetry collection. Her beau, K.A. Opperman also has a great collection of poetry entitled The Crimson Tome (2015, Hippocampus Press). I shall write a post about the both of them in the near future.

Update 5/29/2018:

Just received a message from Mr. Joshi requesting a bio, and sent him the one I cooked up for my Manuscript of Black Hymeneal. Spectral Realms #9 should be coming out in July, and I will post an update when I receive my contributor copy.

The Grimoire of the Dark Young

Now that Black Hymeneal is on the verge of publication, I have begun work on my next release: The Grimoire of the Dark Young. This sinister sounding booklet will feature the words to the poems and lyrics featured in the music of the Dark Young in which I had a hand in writing.

It shall contain brief essays on the book and the band, scans of related artwork, and photos of the band from those halcyon days of yore. The table of contents will run as follows:

01. Tetragramophone

02. My Friend Boris

03. My Love and I

04. Gargoyle

05. Tasty Little Muffins

06. The Silent Sibling

07. Reflections in the Darkness

08. Flower of Evil

09. Thoughts of a Soulless Savior (The Golem of Prague)

10. Femme Fatale

11. The City Never Sleeps

12. Ring-a-Ding Dingy

13. XIII

I will keep you all posted on any updates as things develop.

The Grimorium Iuvenis Obscurum.

 

“Black Hymeneal” Reboot

My first poetry collection, “Black Hymeneal”, is back on track. It will not be the beautiful book I envisioned so long ago, but it will at least get out into the world. It shall not feature any specific artwork. Unfortunately, my friend Michele has some pressing familial responsibilities which have taken precedence (understandably) over helping to complete the artwork for the book, so I am going to just continue without it at this point. Perhaps someday we can collaborate on a portfolio of the completed artwork she did for the book, if the collection proves to be successful enough to warrant that. Her lovely artwork deserves to be seen, and I hope some day it will be. I appreciate the hard work she did and the help she gave me in showing me the ropes of the publishing business. I shall never forget her kindness.

The table of contents for the new book has changed, since I have decided to pull a few pieces for another planned collection of song lyrics for my old band, The Dark Young. More on that after I get “Black Hymeneal” into the world.

The new selection is as follows:

01. Manurog
02. Hell-flower
03. Thalia
04. Witch’s Tit
05. Sor Maria and the Devil, Luzbel
06. Krampus
07. Manqueller Manque
08. Moribond
09. Skull in an Ice Cream Cone
10. HPL RIP
11. Broceliande
12. Love Song of a Lugubrious Gondolier
13. Black Hymeneal

I have already begun retyping the manuscript and adding new introductions for the poems. My goal was to be ready to publish by my 50th birthday in August. We’ll see if I can make the deadline. Keep your eyes on future posts with updates.

Walpurgis Night

Tonight is Walpurgis Night, named after the English Medieval missionary, St. Walpurga, who first brought Christianity to the Germanic people. Her feast day is May 1st, and the eve of the day, April 30th, is often celebrated with dancing and reveling. Somewhere along the line this reveling became identified with the Witch’s Sabbath and Walpurgisnacht, as it is known in Germany, became a night of ill omens and devilry.

Sometime in the early 90’s I wrote a prose piece entitled “Walpurgis Night”, which was inspired by 2 things: one was a stencil someone had sprayed on the wall of my favorite pizza joint on Newbury Street in Boston, which read “Walpurgis Night” in black letters. I always assumed it was a local Goth or Metal band, but brief online research has revealed nothing that I can find. I was later to find, after the fact however, that one of my favorite bands, Black Sabbath, had originally intended their song “War Pigs” to be called “Walpurgis”. Both video and audio documentation of an early version of the song featuring a more lyrical emphasis on the black mass imagery has been available for some time now for public consumption. They had even decided to call the album “Walpurgis”, but the record executives thought it sounded too Satanic, so they toned down the devil imagery and made the newly titled song “War Pigs” into more of an anti-war tune. Of course, when they came up with “Paranoid”, they scrambled to promote that instead as the single and the new title of  the album, the artwork for which still played off of the “War Pigs” theme and confused a lot of stoners back in the day.

The other inspiration, which will be apparent to anyone who is familiar with it, is Bram Stoker’s short story, “Dracula’s Guest”, which was an excised early draft chapter from the original novel.

“Walpurgis Night” is far from my best work, and a little hokey in retrospect, some 25 or so years down the line, but it is an indication of where my creative writing would eventually go.

And so, without further ado, I present to you my prose poem “Walpurgis Night”…

“Walpurgisnacht” by Johannes Praetorius (1668).

Your friend is a fool, and shall die as such. You Englishmen, so arrogant! Where is the precious Crown for him now? His impressively  untainted lineage will mean nothing to the wolves. All blood tastes the same to them, blue or otherwise; but that is the least of his worries.

He would indeed be fortunate if it were only the wolves whom he met with.  For there are myriad other creatures which shall be roaming the lonely roads tonight, far more horrible than they. The dead shall rise and the witches shall be reveling in their sabbats and rutting rituals, and the Light Bearer shall hold sway.

Not a one of  my men would go out on this of all nights to search for any man, no matter what the price. For you see, tonight is a night for prayers, garlic rubbing, and door bolting. Tonight my friend, is Walpurgis Night!