Spectral Realms No. 7

This seventh issue of Hippocampus Press’s acclaimed journal of weird poetry features nearly 60 original poems of fantasy and terror from such renowned poets as Ann K. Schwader, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, John Shirley, Christina Sng, and Richard L. Tierney. Among the more distinctive works are “Dracul’s Demesne,” a sonnet sequence by Frank Coffman; two acrostic sonnets on H. P. Lovecraft by Manuel Pérez-Campos; Adam Bolivar’s ingenious poetic reinterpretation of Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls” (“The Ballad of the de la Poers”); and moving prose-poems by David Barker, Liam Garriock, Maxwell I. Gold, and Charles D. O’Connor III.

As classic reprints, the issue includes the long title poem by Ernest A. Edkins, from his fabulously rare poetry collection Amenaphra and Other Poems (1889), as well as a selection from Paul Eldridge’s Baudelaire-inspired collection Vanitas (1920). S. T. Joshi contributes a searching analysis of George Sterling’s celebrated fantasy poem “A Wine of Wizardry,” concluding that the poem is “a self-fulfilling justification for the entire realm of weird literature.” Leigh Blackmore reviews Benjamin Blake’s much-heralded volume Standing on the Threshold of Madness, while John Shirley covers Tim Powers’s limited-edition booklet, Poems.

In all, Spectral Realms #7 carries on the tradition of meticulously crafted weird verse, which is enjoying an unprecedented renaissance in our time.