The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft

Rating:
Summary: IA!! Lovecraft master of the bizzare!!! Chutulu Ftagn!!
Review: Absolutely amazing! I had no Idea Lovecraft had written so much poetry! 557 pages in length. Divided into 10 parts. juvenillia(poetry written as achild or just getting started in poetry),fantasy and horror(my favorite),occasional verse,satire,seasonal and topographical,amateur affairs,politics and society,personal,alfredo a tragedy( a play by lovecraft),and fragments. Very thorough. A must for the Lovecraft purist and collector.

Rating:
Summary: Lovecraft - not a bad poet!
Review: Having read and collected everything else that lovecraft has written, I decided that it was time to invest in this collected edition of his poetry. I had heard that I shouldnt expect too much, since his prose was a lot better than his poetry. That is still true, but i was quite surprised to find that his poetry is not bad at all. I have to admit, that i have never read or cared much for poetry, and mainly bought this collection to complete my library of lovecraftian books. But i really have enjoyed nearly all of the poems that i so far have read, even though only few of them are horrific and connects to his usual wriitings.

It should also be noted that the publisher Night Shade has done a fine job in producing this hardcover volume; good paper and printing and smythesewn binding that will let you read this book over and over again without the pages falling out. It is rare to see books of this kind nowadays! Buy it!!

Rating:
Summary: Lovecraft waxes poetic...
Review: The result of years of work by scholar S.T. Joshi, the fruit of Lovecraft's poetic fancy here acheives its awaited publication. Lovecraft is most known for his stories, and is important to critics not only for his inestimable contributions to horror and science fiction, but is also renowned for being one of the most voluminously self-documented figures in literary history via the sheer amount of letters he wrote (sometimes he wrote a dozen a day.) His essays, particularly his "Supernatural Horror In Literature," are also being re-assessed as time marches on.

In the midst of all this Lovecraftiana, it is remarkable how little estimation his poetry seems to raise. Even Joshi himself slags it in his definitive biography of the man, considering it of only secondary importance. Indeed, Lovecraft himself seems to have taken little account of much of it as well, judging by some of his notes. However, let it be known that HPL's poetry-- whether a tossed-off rhyme as a note to his Mother on Thanksgiving Day, multiple experimental imitations of his mentor and chief influence Poe, a tart observation on the comedy of Chaplin, a humourous attack on a rival amateur, a bristling satire of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," or a lengthy sonnet cycle steeped in his famed "Cthulhu Mythos"-- is anything but ancillary.

Here in subdivisions carefully arranged by Joshi (Juvenilia; Fantasy and Horror; Occasional Verse; Satire; Seasonal and Topographical; Amateur Affairs; Politics and Society; Personal) are to be found, in toto and for the first time, all the verse that HPL aficionados have been waiting for. This definitive edition complete with notes by Joshi at the back of the volume also includes an index of first lines, an index of titles, as well as a chronology of the poems. This is also significant for publishing Lovecraft's only play, "Alfredo." If there is anything detracting about this edition it is only the front cover, which looks a little amateurish itself, with a representation of Lovecraft that doesn't quite match the man's appearance (his face appears slightly more fleshy than it may have been, although the stare into space seems more than appropriate!) In sum, this is highly recommended to Lovecraft fans who want to experience the man's poetic license in all its manifestations.

Rating:
Summary: Lovecraft waxes poetic...
Review: The result of years of work by scholar S.T. Joshi, the fruit of Lovecraft's poetic fancy here acheives its awaited publication. Lovecraft is most known for his stories, and is important to critics not only for his inestimable contributions to horror and science fiction, but is also renowned for being one of the most voluminously self-documented figures in literary history via the sheer amount of letters he wrote (sometimes he wrote a dozen a day.) His essays, particularly his "Supernatural Horror In Literature," are also being re-assessed as time marches on.

In the midst of all this Lovecraftiana, it is remarkable how little estimation his poetry seems to raise. Even Joshi himself slags it in his definitive biography of the man, considering it of only secondary importance. Indeed, Lovecraft himself seems to have taken little account of much of it as well, judging by some of his notes. However, let it be known that HPL's poetry-- whether a tossed-off rhyme as a note to his Mother on Thanksgiving Day, multiple experimental imitations of his mentor and chief influence Poe, a tart observation on the comedy of Chaplin, a humourous attack on a rival amateur, a bristling satire of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," or a lengthy sonnet cycle steeped in his famed "Cthulhu Mythos"-- is anything but ancillary.

Here in subdivisions carefully arranged by Joshi (Juvenilia; Fantasy and Horror; Occasional Verse; Satire; Seasonal and Topographical; Amateur Affairs; Politics and Society; Personal) are to be found, in toto and for the first time, all the verse that HPL aficionados have been waiting for. This definitive edition complete with notes by Joshi at the back of the volume also includes an index of first lines, an index of titles, as well as a chronology of the poems. This is also significant for publishing Lovecraft's only play, "Alfredo." If there is anything detracting about this edition it is only the front cover, which looks a little amateurish itself, with a representation of Lovecraft that doesn't quite match the man's appearance (his face appears slightly more fleshy than it may have been, although the stare into space seems more than appropriate!) In sum, this is highly recommended to Lovecraft fans who want to experience the man's poetic license in all its manifestations.

Rating:
Summary: For Better or Verse...
Review: The three titans of WEIRD TALES, Clarke Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard, all wrote verse but only Ashton Smith was taken seriously as a poet by the contemporary literary establishment. Howard's manly Kiplingesque verse was written largely for his own amusement, and HPL's was almost entirely confined to his days of activity in the Amateur Press movement (1914-22).

Most of HPL's verse is in an archaic, highly artifical late 18th Century or "Georgian" mode, which he had come to love from the books he found in his grandfather's library as a child. He sometimes writes in the manner of Poe, but almost always to parody. Actually, his most effective verse, like "Fungi from Yuggoth," is in the sonnet form--- a form he rarely used. Editor Joshi says this is "complete," and he means it, down to birthday card inscriptions and one or two line fragments found among HPL's papers. But this almost guarantees a low average of literary quality and interest. Most educated men in the early 19th Century composed verses on occasion. I have seen a photo of Einstein playing violin with a father and son on piano and violin. Einstein inscribed the photo (in German), "Here's to the father and his lad. Our music was--- not bad!" Imagine someone collecting all such Einsteinian greetings and publishing them as THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF EINSTEIN. Einstein would be horrified, and so should you be. Should we be equally horrified by this book, which is not so different? I think not, because HPL is an important literary figure, and after all some of the material collected herein is seriously intended--- but not much.

A lot of the verse consists of gentle kidding of friends in the AP movement, particularly HPL's teenage buddy Alfred Galpin. There is even a mock-Elizabethan blank verse play in which Galpin and other figures of the AP have prominent roles, including HPL himself. One of the most astonishing of these works is "Medusa: A Portrait," several pages of inventive vituperation aimed at a female enemy of HPL's.

Most readers will spend most of their time with HPL's "Fantasy and Horror" verse, which takes up about 60 pages of this mammoth 557-page time. Given the interest many rock musicians take in HPL it is surprising more of this material has not been set to music. A quick search of the Internet did reveal some posted MP3s of precisely such--- I didn't sample them but did notice the titles chosen were often the ones I'd also have chosen for that purpose.

This is a book to keep by the side of the bed and read a few pages in every time cats get you up to be let in or out, or a loud jalopy going by jolts you awake. I think that's about the only way to get through it.