Spectral Realms No. 9: Summer 2018

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The ninth issue of Hippocampus Press’s acclaimed journal of weird poetry features verse by some of the leading contemporary poets of fantasy, horror, and the supernatural, including Frank Coffman, Fred Chappell, Ashley Dioses, Wade German, K. A. Opperman, Leigh Blackmore, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Ann K. Schwader, and the late Michael Fantina. Such significant fiction writers as John Shirley, Darrell Schweitzer, and David Barker also contribute striking weird verse, while Liam Garriock, David B. Harrington, Charles D. O'Connor III, and others show that the prose-poem is alive and well.

Among the classic reprints are rare and unreprinted poems by Madison Cawein (a prominent poet of the turn of the 20th century, much of whose work is laced with weirdness) and Dora Sigurson Shorter. Marcos Legaria contributes the first part of a detailed examination of the influence of Clark Ashton Smith upon the poetry of Robert Nelson, who in his tragically brief life (1912-1935) produced some scintillating work that continues to attract attention.

In the section of reviews, Donald Sidney-Fryer assesses Henry J. Vester III’s Of Mist and Crystal; Frank Coffman supplies a sensitive reading of Ashley Dioses’s Diary of a Sorceress; and Russ Parkhurst evaluates Adam Bolivar’s book of ballads, The Lay of Old Hex.