Spectral Realms No. 8: Winter 2018

This eighth issue of Spectral Realms features a diverse array of poetry from the pens of such acclaimed poets as Adam Bolivar, Ashley Dioses, K. A. Opperman, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Ann K. Schwader, John Shirley, and Richard L. Tierney. Wade German contributes a cycle of four evocative poems, “The Nightmares”; Manuel Pérez-Campos, with “The Vortex That Ate Poseidonis,” pays tribute to the memory of Clark Ashton Smith; Liam Garriock, a promising young writer from Scotland, contributes the moving prose-poems “The Spirit of the Place” and “Past, Present, and Future”; Charles Lovecraft pays homage to his namesake in “The King of Horrors, Howard Phillips Lovecraft”; in “The Final Masquerade,” Alan Gullette turns the King in Yellow mythos upside down; and Mary Krawczak Wilson channels Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth” in “Sea Creatures.”

Among the classic reprints is a poem by Farnsworth Wright, longtime editor of Weird Tales, published in that immortal pulp magazine under a pseudonym; and Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s chilling “To a Young Murderess.” Frank Coffman contributes a long and incisive analysis, “Verse vs. Free Verse,” in which the virtues and failings of free verse are keenly dissected. Sunni K Brock reviews Christina Sng’s scintillating volume A Collection of Nightmares, and Leigh Blackmore assesses the many strengths of Michael Fantina’s Alchemy of Dreams.

Once again, Spectral Realms #8 is a testament to the remarkable renaissance of weird poetry in our time.