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Spectral Realms #15
Spectral Realms No. 15, Summer 2021
The fifteenth issue of Spectral Realms features scintillating work from many of the leading weird poets of today, including Frank Coffman, Wade German, K. A. Opperman, Ann K. Schwader, and Steven Withrow. David Barker continues his cycle of poems inspired by Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth; Carl E. Reed offers a chilling ballad, “The Call of Lizzie,” while D. J. Tyrer evokes Robert W. Chambers’s most famous creations in “Carcoza” and “In the Court of the Dragon.” Justin Permenter summons up the all too real terrors of the Inquisition, Lori R. Lopez mulls on the eternal fascination of the cat, and Adam Bolivar presents a pair of his memorable ballads.
Among the prose poems in this issue, Maxwell I. Gold contributes a trio of his striking ruminations on the terrors of the cyber world, while D. L. Myers finds weirdness in the natural world in “Lepidoptera, My Sweet.” In the Classic Reprints section we find poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Conrad Aiken. S. T. Joshi reviews a trilogy of recent books of poetry, while Leigh Blackmore finds much merit in K. A. Opperman’s new volume. In all, a rich feast for the devotee of the weird in verse!
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Poems:
Mother Dearest / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
Epiphany / M. F. Webb
October is Coming / K. A. Opperman
Plague / Lori R. Lopez
Ballade of the Plague Orgy of Moloch / Wade German
Télos: The Anxiety of Choice / Maxwell I. Gold
Close Behind / by Frank Coffman
The Swamp Maiden / Jordan Zuniga
Permian-Triassic / Geoffrey Reiter
I Awaken in October / Scott J. Couturier
Reading the Leaves / Ann K. Schwader
What Came of the Search / Steven Withrow
The Banquet of Thalassa / Oliver Smith
Tremulous Expectancy / Charles Lovecraft
Assailant from the Unknown / David Barker
The Call of Lizzie / Carl E. Reed
Black Hymeneal / Manuel Arenas
In the Small Hours (moon version) / Chad Hensley
The Final Conquest / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
Carcoza / DJ Tyrer
Mail Order Bride / Alicia Hilton
Plaything / Manuel Pérez-Campos
Death’s Kingdom / Jordan Zuniga
Lepidoptera, My Sweet / D. L. Myers
The Meadows of Night / F. J. Bergmann
Termination Shock / Geoffrey Reiter
The Gathering / M. F. Webb
The Costume / Lori R. Lopez
Faust Unrepentant / Josh Maybrook
Jack Thunder / Adam Bolivar
Of Masks and Monsters / Maxwell I. Gold
Goblin Laughter / Wade German
The Eden Spills / P. B. Grant
Oleander and Wolfsbane / Alicia Hilton
Beautiful Beast / Claire Smith
La Villa Infestada / Frank Coffman
The Haunter of College Hill / David Barker
Within the Wood / Abigail Wildes
A Bottled Dredge / Charles Lovecraft
An Old Bone in the Bluebells / Oliver Smith
Carrot and Stick / Steven Withrow
Shuffling Horror / Carl E. Reed
To Kiss Death’s Shroud / Scott J. Couturier
Witch’s Tit / Manuel Arenas
Our Ghosts Are Going Away / Darrell Schweitzer
In The Court of the Dragon / DJ Tyrer
An Ungodly Thing / Jordan Zuniga
Uses of Enchantment / F. J. Bergmann
Allure of the Western Sky / Jay Sturner
“Shadows, You Say” / Frank Coffman
Hounds of the Lord / Justin Permenter
A Crow Is Calling / Lori R. Lopez
Laughter out of the Sea / Maxwell I. Gold
Old Sorcery / Wade German
Fatal Attraction / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
The Damned: A Ghazal / Joshua Gage
The Bookshop on the Wharf / David Barker
Printz’s Oratory / Steven Withrow
The Daemon Masque / Adam Bolivar
A Word / Geoffrey Reiter
Moonlit Waters / Ashley Dioses
Manurog / Manuel Arenas
Black-winged Battle Cry / Carl E. Reed
Classic Reprints:
The Deserted House / Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Vampire / Conrad Aiken
Reviews:
Two Contemporaries, One Classic / S. T. Joshi
An Aesthetic of Grotesquerie / Leigh Blackmore
Cover art and design by Daniel V. Sauer.
Among the prose poems in this issue, Maxwell I. Gold contributes a trio of his striking ruminations on the terrors of the cyber world, while D. L. Myers finds weirdness in the natural world in “Lepidoptera, My Sweet.” In the Classic Reprints section we find poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Conrad Aiken. S. T. Joshi reviews a trilogy of recent books of poetry, while Leigh Blackmore finds much merit in K. A. Opperman’s new volume. In all, a rich feast for the devotee of the weird in verse!
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Poems:
Mother Dearest / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
Epiphany / M. F. Webb
October is Coming / K. A. Opperman
Plague / Lori R. Lopez
Ballade of the Plague Orgy of Moloch / Wade German
Télos: The Anxiety of Choice / Maxwell I. Gold
Close Behind / by Frank Coffman
The Swamp Maiden / Jordan Zuniga
Permian-Triassic / Geoffrey Reiter
I Awaken in October / Scott J. Couturier
Reading the Leaves / Ann K. Schwader
What Came of the Search / Steven Withrow
The Banquet of Thalassa / Oliver Smith
Tremulous Expectancy / Charles Lovecraft
Assailant from the Unknown / David Barker
The Call of Lizzie / Carl E. Reed
Black Hymeneal / Manuel Arenas
In the Small Hours (moon version) / Chad Hensley
The Final Conquest / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
Carcoza / DJ Tyrer
Mail Order Bride / Alicia Hilton
Plaything / Manuel Pérez-Campos
Death’s Kingdom / Jordan Zuniga
Lepidoptera, My Sweet / D. L. Myers
The Meadows of Night / F. J. Bergmann
Termination Shock / Geoffrey Reiter
The Gathering / M. F. Webb
The Costume / Lori R. Lopez
Faust Unrepentant / Josh Maybrook
Jack Thunder / Adam Bolivar
Of Masks and Monsters / Maxwell I. Gold
Goblin Laughter / Wade German
The Eden Spills / P. B. Grant
Oleander and Wolfsbane / Alicia Hilton
Beautiful Beast / Claire Smith
La Villa Infestada / Frank Coffman
The Haunter of College Hill / David Barker
Within the Wood / Abigail Wildes
A Bottled Dredge / Charles Lovecraft
An Old Bone in the Bluebells / Oliver Smith
Carrot and Stick / Steven Withrow
Shuffling Horror / Carl E. Reed
To Kiss Death’s Shroud / Scott J. Couturier
Witch’s Tit / Manuel Arenas
Our Ghosts Are Going Away / Darrell Schweitzer
In The Court of the Dragon / DJ Tyrer
An Ungodly Thing / Jordan Zuniga
Uses of Enchantment / F. J. Bergmann
Allure of the Western Sky / Jay Sturner
“Shadows, You Say” / Frank Coffman
Hounds of the Lord / Justin Permenter
A Crow Is Calling / Lori R. Lopez
Laughter out of the Sea / Maxwell I. Gold
Old Sorcery / Wade German
Fatal Attraction / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
The Damned: A Ghazal / Joshua Gage
The Bookshop on the Wharf / David Barker
Printz’s Oratory / Steven Withrow
The Daemon Masque / Adam Bolivar
A Word / Geoffrey Reiter
Moonlit Waters / Ashley Dioses
Manurog / Manuel Arenas
Black-winged Battle Cry / Carl E. Reed
Classic Reprints:
The Deserted House / Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Vampire / Conrad Aiken
Reviews:
Two Contemporaries, One Classic / S. T. Joshi
An Aesthetic of Grotesquerie / Leigh Blackmore
Cover art and design by Daniel V. Sauer.
144 pages, Paperback
Published July 16, 2021
About the author
S.T. Joshi
796 books462 followersSunand Tryambak Joshi is an Indian American literary scholar, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors. Besides what some critics consider to be the definitive biography of Lovecraft (H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, 1996), Joshi has written about Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, Lord Dunsany, and M.R. James, and has edited collections of their works.
His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and the dominant worldviews of the authors in question; his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy (namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dunsany, M. R. James, Bierce and Lovecraft), and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. A follow-up volume, The Modern Weird Tale, examines the work of modern writers, including Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, T. E. D. Klein and others, from a similar philosophically oriented viewpoint. The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) includes essays on Dennis Etchison, L. P. Hartley, Les Daniels, E. F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, L. P. Davies, Edward Lucas White, Rod Serling, Poppy Z. Brite and others.
Joshi is the editor of the small-press literary journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, published by Necronomicon Press. He is also the editor of Lovecraft Annual and co-editor of Dead Reckonings, both small-press journals published by Hippocampus Press.
In addition to literary criticism, Joshi has also edited books on atheism and social relations, including Documents of American Prejudice (1999), an annotated collection of American racist writings; In Her Place (2006), which collects written examples of prejudice against women; and Atheism: A Reader (2000), which collects atheistic writings by such people as Antony Flew, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, Gore Vidal and Carl Sagan, among others. An Agnostic Reader, collecting pieces by such writers as Isaac Asimov, John William Draper, Albert Einstein, Frederic Harrison, Thomas Henry Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, Corliss Lamont, Arthur Schopenhauer and Edward Westermarck, was published in 2007.
Joshi is also the author of God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003), an anti-religious polemic against various writers including C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley, Jr., William James, Stephen L. Carter, Annie Dillard, Reynolds Price, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Guenter Lewy, Neale Donald Walsch and Jerry Falwell, which is dedicated to theologian and fellow Lovecraft critic Robert M. Price.
In 2006 he published The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong, which criticised the political writings of such commentators as William F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, David and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly, William Bennett, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving and William Kristol, arguing that, despite the efforts of right-wing polemicists, the values of the American people have become steadily more liberal over time.
Joshi, who lives with his wife in Moravia, New York, has stated on his website that his most noteworthy achievements thus far have been his biography of Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life and The Weird Tale.
His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and the dominant worldviews of the authors in question; his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy (namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dunsany, M. R. James, Bierce and Lovecraft), and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. A follow-up volume, The Modern Weird Tale, examines the work of modern writers, including Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, T. E. D. Klein and others, from a similar philosophically oriented viewpoint. The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) includes essays on Dennis Etchison, L. P. Hartley, Les Daniels, E. F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, L. P. Davies, Edward Lucas White, Rod Serling, Poppy Z. Brite and others.
Joshi is the editor of the small-press literary journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, published by Necronomicon Press. He is also the editor of Lovecraft Annual and co-editor of Dead Reckonings, both small-press journals published by Hippocampus Press.
In addition to literary criticism, Joshi has also edited books on atheism and social relations, including Documents of American Prejudice (1999), an annotated collection of American racist writings; In Her Place (2006), which collects written examples of prejudice against women; and Atheism: A Reader (2000), which collects atheistic writings by such people as Antony Flew, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, Gore Vidal and Carl Sagan, among others. An Agnostic Reader, collecting pieces by such writers as Isaac Asimov, John William Draper, Albert Einstein, Frederic Harrison, Thomas Henry Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, Corliss Lamont, Arthur Schopenhauer and Edward Westermarck, was published in 2007.
Joshi is also the author of God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003), an anti-religious polemic against various writers including C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley, Jr., William James, Stephen L. Carter, Annie Dillard, Reynolds Price, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Guenter Lewy, Neale Donald Walsch and Jerry Falwell, which is dedicated to theologian and fellow Lovecraft critic Robert M. Price.
In 2006 he published The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong, which criticised the political writings of such commentators as William F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, David and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly, William Bennett, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving and William Kristol, arguing that, despite the efforts of right-wing polemicists, the values of the American people have become steadily more liberal over time.
Joshi, who lives with his wife in Moravia, New York, has stated on his website that his most noteworthy achievements thus far have been his biography of Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life and The Weird Tale.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 16, 2021
My personal favorites from this edition:
"Reading the Leaves" Ann K. Schwader
"The Banquet of Thelassa" Oliver Smith
"An Old Bone in the Bluebells" Oliver Smith
"The Daemon Masque" Adam Bolivar
And, of course, that poem about The Inquisition from some guy in Texas...
"Reading the Leaves" Ann K. Schwader
"The Banquet of Thelassa" Oliver Smith
"An Old Bone in the Bluebells" Oliver Smith
"The Daemon Masque" Adam Bolivar
And, of course, that poem about The Inquisition from some guy in Texas...
November 5, 2021
Although I was not entirely enthusiastic about the contents of the previous issue of Spectral Realms, No. 15 is a return to form, and even contains some surprises for a long-time reader. These come in the form of excellent contributions from Lori R. Lopez ("Plague" and "A Crow is Calling") and Oliver Smith ("The Banquet of Thelassa" and "An Old Bone in the Bluebells"). Both Lopez and Smith have been published in previous installments of Spectral Realms, but their work had never really grabbed my attention in the same way that the pieces noted above have done. It's great to see the stable of talented poets expanding, a fact which bodes well for the future of Spectral Realms.
On the flip side, it's no surprise that much of the best verse herein comes from the poets who typically shine out from these pages: in this issue, Darrell Schweitzer and Steven Withrow are as reliable as ever, and one can only regret the absence of any new verse from Christina Sng.
Other notable poems are M.F. Webb's "The Gathering" and P.B. Grant's "The Eden Spills", the latter a case study in how to use a traditional verse form and well-trod subject matter to express something fresh and thought-provoking.
On the flip side, it's no surprise that much of the best verse herein comes from the poets who typically shine out from these pages: in this issue, Darrell Schweitzer and Steven Withrow are as reliable as ever, and one can only regret the absence of any new verse from Christina Sng.
Other notable poems are M.F. Webb's "The Gathering" and P.B. Grant's "The Eden Spills", the latter a case study in how to use a traditional verse form and well-trod subject matter to express something fresh and thought-provoking.
October 21, 2021
One's again Spectral Realms has delivered another wonderful dose of weird poetry to my doorstep. I'm always delighted to start a new issue of this great journal.
It was lovely too see old favorites return but also to see some new faces in this issue of Spectral Realms.
Some of my favorite poems in this issue where:
-All three poems by Wade German: Ballade of the Plague Orgy of Moloch, Goblin Laughter, and Old Sorcery.
-The Banquet of Thalassa by Oliver Smith.
-In the Small Hour by Chad Hensley.
-Thermination Shock by Geoffrey Reiter.
--The Costume by Lori R. Lopez.
-Jack Thunder by Adam Bolivar.
-To kiss Death's Shroud by Scott J. Couturier.
-Our Ghosts are Going Away by Darrell Schweitzer.
-Uses of Enchantment by F. J. Bergmann.
-Laughter out of the Sea by Maxwell I. Gold.
-The Bookshop on the Wharf by David Barker.
Both Classic reprints where just lovely. I never not yet seen one I didn't enjoy.
From the two book reviews I ended up only reading the review by S. T. Joshi. The other was on K. A. Opperman's newest poetry collection, 'The Laughter of Ghouls', with I already have in my collection.
It was lovely too see old favorites return but also to see some new faces in this issue of Spectral Realms.
Some of my favorite poems in this issue where:
-All three poems by Wade German: Ballade of the Plague Orgy of Moloch, Goblin Laughter, and Old Sorcery.
-The Banquet of Thalassa by Oliver Smith.
-In the Small Hour by Chad Hensley.
-Thermination Shock by Geoffrey Reiter.
--The Costume by Lori R. Lopez.
-Jack Thunder by Adam Bolivar.
-To kiss Death's Shroud by Scott J. Couturier.
-Our Ghosts are Going Away by Darrell Schweitzer.
-Uses of Enchantment by F. J. Bergmann.
-Laughter out of the Sea by Maxwell I. Gold.
-The Bookshop on the Wharf by David Barker.
Both Classic reprints where just lovely. I never not yet seen one I didn't enjoy.
From the two book reviews I ended up only reading the review by S. T. Joshi. The other was on K. A. Opperman's newest poetry collection, 'The Laughter of Ghouls', with I already have in my collection.
December 5, 2024
This was a very enjoyable issue of Spectral Realms. Of course, I didn't like all of the issue, but as I am not really qualified to judge between good and bad poetry, so I prefer just to focus on what I enjoyed the most.
In this issue, that has to be The Costume by Lori R. Lopez. It is such tremendous fun, it had me smiling throughout. Of course, the two poems (The Final Conquest and Fatal Attraction) by Ngo Binh Anh Khoa were also thrilling reading. Holy crap, that guy is the master of language.
Also great fun was Abigail Wilde's Within the Wood. And the usual Spectral Realms crowd provided good value.
In this issue, that has to be The Costume by Lori R. Lopez. It is such tremendous fun, it had me smiling throughout. Of course, the two poems (The Final Conquest and Fatal Attraction) by Ngo Binh Anh Khoa were also thrilling reading. Holy crap, that guy is the master of language.
Also great fun was Abigail Wilde's Within the Wood. And the usual Spectral Realms crowd provided good value.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews