Developing A "Corpus-Wide Working Familiarity" of H.P. Lovecraft: "What the Moon Brings"

I've decided it's time to re-read all the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Why? Lovecraft is going to be a major topic of my dissertation (I plan on devoting an entire chapter to him). And so, of course, I want to be familiar with his work.

I find developing this sort of "corpus-wide working familiarity" particularly difficult in the case of pulp writers, who tend to write copious amounts of short fiction (in addition to lots of shorter novels). When you're studying a novelists, it's somewhat easy to isolate their major novels and just read them. It's not so easy with pulp writers. First off, they tend to write a lot more; and, secondly, because they write a lot more, it's difficult to clearly delineate what's worth studying from what's not worth studying.

Although I've read the majority of HPL's fiction (is a scattered sort of way) I can't attest to having read it all; and so, I think it's time for me to march steadily through his entire bibliography (as much as is possible).

You might be interested in this PDF version of H.P. Lovecraft's bibliography: H.P. Lovecraft's bibliography. I for one have difficult keeping track of which of his stories I've read.

The first story I read in this effort to develop "corpus wide working familiarity" of HPL was actually a prose poem called, "What the Moon Brings." According to the introductory note in the anthology I'm reading from, it was written on June 5th, 1922, and it was published in The National Amateur in May of 1923.

What's it about? It's about a wanderer who hates the moonlight, which seems to change the familiar to the unfamiliar and strange. Also, the wanderer is stirred by visions of the ocean illuminated by moonlight.

To a large extent the narrative is skeletal. The only thing that happens is the wanderer watches the ocean tide roll out and then he sees a horrible sight: "I watched the tide go out under that sinking moon, and saw gleaming the spires, the towers, and the roofs of that dead, dripping city" (213).

This seems to be a recurring image in Lovecraft, the receding of a veil and the exposure of a secret, usually figured as gross and threatening. I am thinking of a little kid, overturning a rock, and seeing spiders and centipedes and pill bugs.