Spectral Realms No. 17: Summer 2022

Spectral Realms #17

by S.T. Joshi (Editor), Adam Bolivar, Richard L Tierney

This issue of Spectral Realms is dedicated to the late Richard L. Tierney (1936–2022), one of the pioneering weird poets of our time. Included is an unpublished poem by Tierney and poetic tributes to him by Leigh Blackmore and Charles Lovecraft.

As always, the issue contains scintillating work by some of the leading weird versifiers of the present day, including Wade German, Frank Coffman, Ian Futter, and Scott J. Couturier. John Shirley, Darrell Schweitzer, Don Webb, and Geoffrey Reiter demonstrate that they are masters of terror in poetry as well as in prose fiction. Lori I. Lopez explores the strangeness of cats in “La Gata,” while LindaAnn LoSchiavo tells of the grim fate of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s wife. David Barker and Ngo Binh Anh Khoa write evocative poetry in the Lovecraftian mode, and Josh Maybrook contributes an acrostic sonnet on Poe. Adam Bolivar continues his work in Anglo-Saxon meter, while Carl E. Reed sends in a “ghoulish tale” in verse. Prose poems by Maxwell I. Gold and Manuel Arenas also enliven the issue.

Among the classic reprints is a poem, “Vampire,” by Bertrande Harry Snell, from a 1929 issue of Weird Tales, as well as a poem by veteran fantasy poet Lilith Lorraine. Marcos Legaria contributes an essay on R. H. Barlow’s early poetry.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Poems

Slouching toward Yuggoth / Richard L. Tierney
To Richard L. Tierney: In Memoriam / Leigh Blackmore
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters: An Extended Surveil / Carl E. Reed
A Promise for Today / Maxwell I. Gold
La Gata / Lori R. Lopez
Footsteps in the Night / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
The Golden Age / Charles Lovecraft
I Met a Girl in a Cemetery / John Shirley
I See Too Much: A Clairvoyant’s Complaint / Frank Coffman
House / Rebecca Fraser
Malice Must Dwell within Your Heart / Darrell Schweitzer
The Nachzehrer / Scott J. Couturier
The Path of Grey / Adam Bolivar
Semblance / David Barker
A Creature of the Twilight / Wade German
Cometfall / DJ Tyrer
Candy Corn Caresses / Ashley Dioses
The Garden of Night / Andrew White
Death Confession: A Golden Shovel / LindaAnn LoSchiavo
Communion / Manuel Pérez-Campos
The Witch’s Tree / Jay Hardy
Last Soldier on the Beach / Jay Sturner
The Black Goat / Linn Donlon
Knowing the Dragon / Geoffrey Reiter
Battle against the Dark Lord / Jordan Zuniga
Spider / Don Webb
Antiquarian Research / David C. Kopaska-Merkel
A Little Song of Death / Carl E. Reed
The Court of Azathoth / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
Destiny / David Schembri
A Song of Two Deaths / Ian Futter
Flower of Evil / Manuel Arenas
Nordic Instinct / Charles Lovecraft
The Lady in the Wood / Geoffrey Reiter
In the Beginning / Melissa Ridley Elmes
In Her Defence / Claire Smith
By What Right Do You Call Yourself Patience? / Thomas Goff
Incubus / Scott J. Couturier
Heolstor / Adam Bolivar
Cast / Ron L. Johnson II
Phantasms / Wade German
The Seeker’s Lament / Frank Coffman
A Crime of Passion / G. O. Clark
On the Fantasque Ballet Premiere of Afternoon of a Faun / Manuel Pérez-Campos
Yethwood / Oliver Smith
Whalesong / DJ Tyrer
Dusk / Andrew White
Nativity / David Barker
Blindsight / Lori R. Lopez
Bold Voyager / Darrell Schweitzer
The Daemon Lord / Chad Hensley
Eye of Sapphire, Eye of Emerald / Kurt Newton
Survive against the Swarm / Jordan Zuniga
Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti, Cemetery Superstar / LindaAnn LoSchiavo
Blackburn’s Bloom / Manuel Arenas
Essential Guide to the Land of Dream / David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Watch and Wait / Margaret Curtis
The Ghosts’ Autumnal Fair / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
Churchyard Passacaglia / Thomas Goff
Fat Man and Yellow-Eyes: A Ghoulish Tale / Carl E. Reed
On Reading Poe / Josh Maybrook
Cats Which Walk in Dreams / Linn Donlon
How the World Ends / Melissa Ridley Elmes
When Cyber Things Return / Maxwell I. Gold
Zeohyr’s Allure / Scott J. Couturier
The Squire of Sweven / Adam Bolivar
Whispers from a Crematory Skull / Manuel Pérez-Campos
Unrepaired / DJ Tyrer
Of the Swordsman of Words and Worlds: Eldritchard / Charles Lovecraft

Classic Reprints

Funeral of a Vampire / Lilith Lorraine
Vampire / Bertrande Harry Snell

Articles

R.H. Barlow and the Activist Poets: How Did They Meet? / Marcos Legaria



Cover art and design by Daniel V. Sauer.

139 pages, Paperback

Published July 19, 2022

About the author

Sunand 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.