H. P. Lovecraft and his two closest Mythos-writing friends, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, all wrote poetry. It’s what people who were born around the turn of the century did. Remember that there weren’t any video games or TV mini-series in those days. People actually read poetry in books and magazines. So, it shouldn’t be any surprise that there is Mythos poetry. Descended from Edgar Allan Poe, HPL’s greatest model, Mythos poetry is dark, usually rhymed, and meant to invoke a chill or create a fantastic vision. Just like Poe’s “City Beneath the Sea”:
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
Read the rest:
“Fungi from Yuggoth” is a paperback collection of HPL’s poetry–long out of print, alas.
Yes, but you can read the original version in Weird Tales, now scanned at https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Apulpmagazinearchive&sort=-publicdate
GW
Thanks– I might take a look this evening.
Edritch Tales by Lovecraft and Stephen Jones also has it.
I’ve recorded 3 of Lovecraft’s poems so far, as well as a few by Howard and one by Clark Ashton Smith. I’ve compiled them all on a list I call Pulp Poetry.
Let me know what you think.