The Star-Treader and other poems

by Clark Ashton Smith

This early volume of Clark Ashton Smith's poetry was published when he was a mere lad of nineteen. At that point, he achieved international acclaim, and an American critic dubbed him the "Keats of the Pacific." He moved for a short time in the same circles as Ambrose Bierce and Jack London. In any case, these poems are a sign of the talent to come.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Weird Fiction

66 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1912

About the author

Clark Ashton Smith was a poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. It is for these stories, and his literary friendship with H. P. Lovecraft from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in 1937, that he is mainly remembered today. With Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, also a friend and correspondent, Smith remains one of the most famous contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales.

His writings are posted at his official website.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Through years reversed and lit again I followed that unending chain
Wherein the suns are links of light; Retraced through lineal, ordered spheres
The twisting of the threads of years In weavings wrought of noon and night;
Through stars and deeps I watched the dream unroll, Those folds that form the raiment of the soul."

The Star-Treader and Other Poems feels like the last breath of some ancient, dying world—strange, rich, and hauntingly beautiful. Smith wrote it when he was barely out of his teens (some poems from when he was 14!), with almost no formal education, and yet the work feels like it came from someone much older, someone who had already seen too much of the universe.

These poems are really something else. They’re not really interested in the real world. Smith pulls from Poe and Baudelaire (he himself was once described as "the Keats of the West Coast") but he doesn’t stay there. He takes off into his own space: alien cities, frozen dreams, and stars that don’t care if you’re looking. His skies aren’t peaceful—they’re cold and endless, and they watch you back.

It’s not easy reading. The language is thick, and the images are so rich they can start to blur. But that’s kind of the point. Smith's language is just...mesmerizing, and he uses it like a tool for summoning—his poems feel more like spells than stories. You won’t find much comfort here, but if you like getting lost in something vast and strange, there’s a lot to love.

Smith didn’t just write like someone from another world—he was. This book is all the proof you need.

[Nakedfartbarfer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here Clark Ashton Smith is digging on the lode of the Romantic poets and tends to write in such celestial abstractions that any modern reader of poetry may find it difficult to stay inquisitive of the text. Nowadays, our cosmopolitan sensibilities demand concrete details with which to correlate to such "universe-ulterior" abstractions. William Carlos Williams' "no ideas but in things," is a guiding tenet. Despite this, cliched precepts of Romantic poetry have informed poetry to this day.

If you are planning to write a poem, here is a handy and incomplete list of words that ought not grace a line of poetry again in this lifetime and a few weeks into eternity: eternity, darkness, light, destiny, dream, forever, stars, scars, spirit, god, goddess, aura, truth, existence, emptiness, innocence, pure, any personification of the moon, and of course, a poet invokes the word 'soul' at their fucking peril. Definitely, the idea that the heart is the organ of all virtue, all sin, all regret, all agenbite of inwit, etc. can be discarded. In the third millenium, I say we update it to the pineal gland. I need sleep to modulate any of my driven-snow virtue. Words like darkness, light, innocence, pure, and Victorian truth with a capital T, are useful for phrasing good, evangelical pentecostalism. Lessons that scream their value if one's belief lies in such.

Part of the legacy of Victorian and Romantic era poetry is that poets try to gravitate toward the profound, thinking that there lies the core of poetry. They cape their poems with Eastern mysticism, Pythagorean Eternal Recurrence, New Age astrologies, secret lores, arcane runes, chicken-bone and entrail fortune-telling. These excursions are fun, if tamed and given as fun, but if polemic or intending wisdom, fall flat. The more common, the more usual, the more mundane, the more known is now the great force behind poetry. Often, these low origins give way in a poem to a semantic jolt, something odd, something without empirical anchorage to make the familiar unfamiliar.

Prescriptive rants aside, Clark Ashton Smith acquits himself adequately, though he was somewhat late to the party to be publishing this kind of stuff (1912). He has a fantastically ornate vocabulary that is belied by the employed conventions. Because he is addicted to cosmic monstrosities, he takes a Romantic penchant for astronomical imagery to its absolute limit, writing of heavenly gyres and violence in sidereal gulfs from the detached perspective of alternity. If that is what you are looking for as a reader, he does it well.

[j · Rating 3 out of 5]

Smith's apocalyptic pastorals evoke cosmic immensity just as strongly as they do the crushing insignificance of one mopey little man writing weird poetry.

[Bryn Grover · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of dark fantasy, weird, horror based, and romantic poems of Clark Ashton Smith. As a member of the Weird Tales Triumverate with H.P. Lovecraft, I felt compelled to read this. I was also inertested as a poet myself. Since my 'horror' based poetry is minimal compared to other types of poetry, I wanted to see how one of the these guys took up the approach. I can't say that I was 'scared' by any of the poems. Some seemed too long winded and would have been better turned into a short story. But overall I was impressed with what Smith was able to get across in poetry. Even if not scary to me, the poems had a lot of suspense and turns of phrase that I really appreciated. I hope to take lessons from this reading to apply to my own writing.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considering that Clark Ashton Smith was but nineteen years old when this collection was first published in 1912, it's an astonishingly confident and mature artistic statement. While there are some clunkers in these pages, there are also some truly powerful and memorable verses, such as "Nero", "Retrospect And Forecast" and "To the Darkness". The first of those remains one of my all-time favorite poems, a tour de force of dark imagination delivered with enviable technical skill.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really solid collection of weird poetry! My favorites were The Morning Pool, Ode to Music, The Maze of Sleep, The Masque of Forsaken Gods, and A Live-Oak Leaf. I particularly loved Smith's use of imagery, rhythm, and rhyme.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you feel there's too much space
In space,
And the ground beneath your feet feels supported
By unseen pillars,
And you feel the Old Gods are still watching us
From their death beds,
Then you might enjoy the poetry
of Clark Ashton Smith.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cosmic trip

This book, The Star Treader and Other Poems far surpassed Sterling's first book A Wine Of Wizardry. Methinks the mentor has taught CAS far too well.

[Петьо Върбанов · Rating 5 out of 5]

The blank and universal Sphinx
Each world beholds at last—and sinks.

[Forked Radish · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the title.

[chris fidler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, just not what I expected.

I think most people who stumble upon this expect some dark, morbid poetry based loosely on Smith's later stories, but it's actually a very early collection of poetry and seems like student work. The poetry is very much like most late 19th- early 20th century poetry, other than the occasional odd medieval word. One word, gyre, appears in almost every story, so I looked it up. Seems it either means a shackle or restraint, or if written as gyres, becomes a verb meaning whirls. Its an interesting word, but I didn't need to see it 50 times in a 115 page book.

[MisterFweem · Rating 1 out of 5]

Review is here. In brief: His stories are a lot better than his poetry.

http://misterfweem.blogspot.com/2013/...

[Jason Kron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really dense, but a lot of cool words thrown together.

[Richard Joya · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a reason why he is the last romantic.