The Poet as God: The Fantasy Poetry of Clark Ashton Smith

I read a lot of literature. Of the literature I read, much of that literature is of the "fantasy" genre. And of the "fantasy literature" I tend to read, the vast majority of that is "narrative prose" or novels.

To my embarrassment, I rarely read poetry. And I never read what I would call "fantasy poetry." When I do read poetry--usually it's because I'm teaching it--the poetry I read is "hyper-canonical," major stopping points on the tour path of Western Poetry of the English Language: the Beowulf poet, Milton, Shakespeare, the Romantics, the Modernists. In spite of the fact that my wife is a poet, I rarely read contemporary poetry.

But lately I've been trying to do some serious thinking about poetry, particularly in the context of fantasy. Why?

Recently I've been working on a chapter in my dissertation focused on the fantasist, Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961). Those of you who know a little about CAS know that before he was publishing in Weird Tales alongside H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, he was publishing poetry in Poetry Magazine alongside W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound. Although Clark Ashton Smith was a pulp writer who wrote genre fiction, there's an argument to be made that he was, at least earlier in his career, also a Modernist poet.

I was reading from a wonderful anthology of Clark Ashton Smith's "Fantastic Poems" that I recommend to you. It's titled, The Last Oblivion: Best Fantastic Poems of Clark Ashton Smith (New York: Hippocampus P, 2002), and it's edited by S.T. Joshi and David Schultz.

The opening of Smith's poem, "The Hashish Easter; Or, the Apocalypse of Evil" struck me. Here's how the poem begins:


Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million colored sun
 Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizon infinite. (15)

Here Smith has created a character, "the emperor of dreams." I'm inclined to believe the "emperor of dreams" is a kind of imaginary poet figure, an archetype or symbol for all poets.

The Poet with a capital P wears a sun as a crown and the sky as a robe. And further, the Poet illuminates the heavens. In this vision of the poet, Smith has imagined the artist as the basis of reality. It's not as if the artist is erotically fusing with nature, an earlier idea from the Romantic period. The artist is not simply coming to terms with the world "out there" and then fusing with it. Rather, the artist is the world. The artist not only creates or organizes being. The artist becomes being as such.

I find this idea so intriguing. I reminds me of that movie, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. In that movie, the implication is that there is this little old man whose simple mind sustains all being. In the reality of this movie, all consciousness somewhat dwells within the wide space of this little old man's mind.

Smith seems to be offering a similar vision here. The poet doesn't stand off away from being and thereby change reality; rather, the poet becomes the very "stuff" of reality. The poet is a god not in the sense of a center of consciousness that stands out of being; rather, it is the poet who is the basis of being.

Art, Drugs, and Religion: Clark Ashton Smith's "The Disinterment of Venus"

So I've revving up my engines to prepare for writing my next dissertation chapter. This chapter will focus will on Clark Ashton Smith (13 January 1893 – 14 August 1961), a poet and writer of fantasy fiction who published in Weird Tales alongside H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. I wanted to discuss one of this stories here, "The Disinterment of Venus." Published in Weird Tales in July of 1934, it appeared alongside the famous novelette, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key," a collaboration between H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price.

The story takes place in Smith's imaginary French province of Averoigne, at a 16th century Benedictine monastery. While the monks are digging in their garden, they come upon a giant statue, "the grimy head and torso of what was plainly a marble woman goddess from antique years." The statue is revealed to be somewhat supernatural. It evokes in people who look upon it deep desires. These desires are animal in nature: lust, hunger, the desire for alcohol. To a large extent, the statue emanates a kind of vice aura that contaminates those who look upon it. As the story progresses, the statue turns many of the otherwise god-fearing monks to sin. Eventually, one monk decides he has had enough. He approaches the statue with an intent on destroying it, with a heavy hammer. He is found the next day in the hole from which they exhumed the statue. The statue has crushed him to death, is on top of him, and it seems as though--even in death--he is embracing it.

Though this story didn't "scare" me, I found it extremely intriguing. I think allegorizes a certain kind of relationship to art, to drugs, to religion. In this story, an art object becomes monstrous. It becomes a kind of narcotic, something the monks become addicted to. And it leads to their ruin. I think this comparison between art and addictive drugs quite intriguing. Both drugs and art are reagents to ostensibly expand one's consciousness, yes? And furthermore, both drugs and art are sometimes offered as substitutes for religious experience. In this story, you have a drug-like art object set in a monastery, a place of worship. For me, this temple place with a goddess statue that attracts like a drug is a kind of "bridge point" between this world and other worlds. It is a kind of precipice that the monks throw themselves into in order to escape mundane existence in the seeking out of other worlds.

I think there is an ever prevalent attraction to the idea of "escaping" the world through art, through drugs, through religion Clark Ashton Smith's oeuvre as a whole.

The Best of Weird Tales in 1923: "The Basket" by Herbert J. Mangham

Tonight I want to tell you about another story from the anthology The Best of Weird Tales: 1923. Titled, "The Basket," this story was also in the first issue of Weird Tales.

Some summary: it's about a guy who stays at a boarding house who is extremely indeterminate. He doesn't tell anyone anything about who he is. He isn't very unique in terms of his physical appearances. And, he's a kind of random, unassuming sort of guy. Without spoiling the story for you, he simply "goes away" in the end. I won't tell you how.

I find this story extremely interesting. The protagonist is so anonymous. That is what I think his main characteristic is: anonymity. This is so interesting when one considers that specificity of character, setting, and time are what some would say defines the "novelistic" style. Sure, this is a short story, but it's still written in the "novelistic" or "realistic" style, if you will.

The first story from this anthology that I looked at is titled "The Grave," and it relates the story of a soldier in World War I who was buried alive and who tries to stay alive; and the main aesthetic effect of that story is confusion. He didn't know anything: was he going to be rescued? How many days had passed? Was the battle still raging?

Here you have a story where a character shows up, he's shrouded in mystery, and he disappears. And so, it's similar to the previous story in that the thematic preoccupation is "cognition" or "knowledge". The story depicts a protagonist who knows nothing; in the second story, we, as readers, know nothing.

I'm seeing a thematic preoccupation in Weird Tales with the unknown. Could these stories be thought of as thematically focused on unknowns?

The Best of Weird Tales in 1923: Orville R. Emerson's "The Grave"

So, I recently purchased an anthology of stories from Weird Tales titled, The Best of Weird Tales: 1923. This was supposed to be the inaugural book in a series of book--one for each year of Weird Tales publication. Not really sure what happened, but I'm sure what didn't happen: this was the only edition released.

Gods, I would have loved if they had done the entire series. Alas. Nevertheless, I've very greatful for this anthology, of which I read the first two stories and extremely enjoyed them. In this blog post I want to tell you about the first story, a story titled, "The Grave" by Orville R. Emerson. If you don't recognize this name, don't worry. I don't either. I did some google searches for him, and found nothing. Nothing whatsoever (aside froma  few passing references to this anthology and this *one* story in Weird Tales. I don't know why, but I find his anonymity intriguing.

Anyhow, what's this story about? Well, it takes place during "the Great War," and it is ostensibly written as the memoir of a German soldier who has been trapped in a underground fortress after it has been bombarded by allied rail guns. The story relates his struggles to survive: organizing supplies, rationing food, digging his way out, etc.. It's kind of a demented Robinson Crusoe, if you will. I won't give away the end because I think you should buy the anthology (it's a small press! c'mon!) and read it. But I what to reflect on some really interesting thematic issues.

Confusion and ignorance. The protagonist spends that vast majority of the time attempting to understand his situation. He thinks he will be relieved after the battle is over. He thinks one of the sides will stop to help the soldiers captured in the destroyed fortress. And so he's optimistic. After a while he starts second guessing himself. He then starts trying to keep track of the day and time, but can't, considering he's closed off from the world. And so, he doesn't know how long, i.e. how many hours, weeks, days, months he's been underground. Eventually he starts falling in and out of sleep and starts imagining that he's doing things he doesn't remember. For example, he'll committ to only eating so much of his rations; and, he'll wake up, and more rations are gone. He wonders, did he do this in my sleep?

Historical resonance. Considering this story was written in 1923, a time when the horrors of World War I were no doubt still lingering in the "cultural imagination" in the states, I think there is some intense "allegorical resonance" here. You have a protagonist extremely confused, hearing bombing all around him, struggling with rations, trying to say sane. Is it useful to think of him as a representing of a kind of universal experience of modernity at that time?

Anyhow. I wanted to share this story with particularly and this anthology with you generally. I hope to review more in the future.

"Extremes more terrible than madness": Clark Ashton Smith's, "The Isle of the Torturers"

So, I've been doing reading for my dissertation prospectus. Some of what I've been reading is the work of Clark Ashton Smith, who I believe will have his own chapter. This morning I want to review a short story of his I just read, "The Isle of the Torturers."

Original illustration in Weird Tales, March 1933

Published in in the March 1933 issue of Weird Tales, I highly recommend it. I'd describe it as a kind of "sword and sorcery" "weird fantasy."

Let me briefly summarize it: it's about a king whose kingdom has been beset by a horrible disease that has come out of the cosmos, a disease called "the silver death." Everyone in his kingdom dies, and so he flees his kingdom over sea. While fleeing, his ship crashes on an island where there is a decadent civilization that loves nothing more than to torture people. After being subjected to a horrible variety of tortures, he infects everyone on this island of torturers with the silver death. They all die.

We have here the story of a "sleeper agent," a single individual who seems like they are powerless before a great power but who is actually quite powerful.

I don't have much to say about the plot other than it's very gripping. I'm not very familiar with Smith's work, but my impression is that the strangeness and latent violence of the plot is characteristic of his work.

What fascinates me intensely by Smith in his style. He was a critically acclaimed poet before he began writing weird fiction. And this artistic past can be glimpsed in his prose style. Consider this passage, which relates the arrival of "the silver death" to the kingdom--it is called "Yoros"--of the protagonist:

There was no time to flee from the strange, inevitable scourge. Dreadfully and quickly, beneath the clear stars, it breathed upon Yoros; and few were they who awakened from slumber at dawn. Fulbra, young king of Yoros, who had but newly succeeded the throne, was virtually a ruler without people. (187).

Consider the cadence of the end of each sentence. Each sentence builds towards a stirring image or imaginable action: "inevitable scourge," "breathed upon Yoros," "slumber at dawn," "ruler without people." We have here a staccato of imagery that evokes a kind of despair.

Smith's prose style in this story is particularly rich, and I think this richness is a function of the story's plot, its preoccupation with the senses. Torture is, at its most basic level, the agitation of the senses. Consider this passage, where the torturers are torturing the protagonist:

For the islanders of Uccastrog had designed innumerable torments, curious and subtle, wherewith to  harry and excruciate the five senses; and they could harry the brain itself, driving it to extremes more terrible than madness (194).

Smith's prose style is pervaded by such imagery and other attempts to evoke sensory experience: sights, smells, tastes; his rich vocabulary and strange new words are, on the level of text-as-image, visually stirring. In a strange way, Smith's style is a kind of torture, a "harrying" of the senses, if you will.

There's a whole tradition of art being agonizing, excruciating, but also satisfying. There's something of that going on in this story. And I wish I had more time to trace it out.

By the way, I read this story is a famous anthology of Weird Tales titled, Weird Tales: 32 Unwearthed Terrors, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowcisz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg (New York: Bonanza Books, 1988). It's available used on Amazon and a beautiful book.

Also, I've been compiling some Weird Tales resources, if you're interested. Not much is here just yet. Here's the link: Weird Tales

Female Imagery in Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror (Post 2): Margaret Brundage Weird Tales Cover Art Oct 1933

Margaret Brundage was one of the most prolific cover artists for the pulp magazines; for Weird Tales specifically, she created 66 original pieces of cover art. Like many of the contemporary readers of the pulp, I was not aware that a woman created much of its cover art. Naively, I just assumed that men drew the beautiful, scantily clad women on these covers. In a similar vein as Frazetta’s Vampirella cover, these images were meant to attract the reader’s attention, to draw him in, to get him to purchase the magazine. But on further reflection, something does come across through Brundage’s work that does not (for me, anyway) happen when I view Frazetta’s paintings.

The characteristic that is most telling of Brundage’s work is its inherent movement. To look at this particular image, I am struck by its apparent natural fluidity. Like Frazetta’s work, Brundage’s females are curvy, seductive, and seem to embody great power. Unlike Frazetta’s work, though, all of Brundage’s paintings seem ready to burst forth from the page. Their power is highly charged, active.

This image of the Vampire Master (I can only assume that that was what Brundage’s was illustrating as it’s the only story title printed with the image) shows her posed unusually. The angle of her arms, the placement of her hands, give the impression that she was caught in mid-action. Perhaps she is getting ready to extend her arms outward from her body; perhaps she will extend them in front of her. She may even be in the process of dropping her arms by the sides of her body. The viewer does not know, exactly, what’s she doing, but her movement transcends the page. She actually seems to embody more power than Vampirella does because of Brundage’s ability to give her paintings such life.

What also intrigues me about Brundage’s choice of images is that she typically did not illustrate scenes from the stories. Often, she would just create images that showed what she believed to be the essence of a story, her impression. The vampire master, then, may look nothing like this; she might not even be a woman. So, while still succumbing to the commodity nature of the publication, and the fact that images of beautiful women probably sold more issues, Brundage may be inverting this trend.

By choosing to present so many images of women on the cover (and many of her covers show only women, no men) even when the female characters may not have played a major role in the stories or even had been in the stories to begin with, she was instead reserving this space for images of powerful, active women.

Holiday Post: the Gift of Pulp, the Pleasure of Acquistion

For my first holiday post, I’d like to share some Christmas presents I received from my infinitely wise and always surprising wife, Nicole: four issues of *Weird Tales.*

I don’t want to assume everyone knows about this magazine (it’s really hard not to!). And so, here’s a little background: this is an important pulp magazine not just in terms of genre fiction but in terms of popular culture in general: film, television, comic books, etc., you name it, important elements can be traced back to *Weird Tales.*

In other words, it’s a Ur text of our popular culture (and many sub-cultures).

I study *Weird Tales* academically and have never collected it myself. Why? First: it’s an extremely expensive habit and grad students are scandalously poor (I, alas, am no exception). Second: one of the nation’s best—if not the best--popular culture library is no more than a two hour drive from my house (the Bowling Green Popular Culture Library). They have a full run of it.

I always told myself I wasn’t going to try and collect *Weird Tales* because it is one of the most sought after periodicals and can quickly become a financial liability. Well, Nicole saw to it that that tidbit of self-discipline was destroyed.

Within 10 minutes of receiving these I had begun imagining the fantastical day when I complete my collection (this will never happen, of course, unless I become an oil tycoon or a “ dot com” millionaire—better keep blogging!)

Here are the issues she got me: May 1944, January 1947, March and November of 1948. And here are some pictures of the covers:

I apologize for the crappy photography. I’ve never been good at it; however, for me, the cover art of *Weird Tales* is just as interesting as the material inside. I thought they would be a treat to see.

Here is a link to a full catalog of Weird Tales where you can consult the table of contents and see better graphics of the covers, if you so desire: Weird Tales Catalog

This is a great site for archival information on *Weird Tales* I’ve relied on often. While I’m at it, I might as well throw a reference book at you. If you’re interested in learning more about *Weird Tales,* then you might take a look at *The Weird Tales Story* by Robert Weinberg. It’s a history of the magazine with a lot of inside information related by previous writers that is simply not available anywhere else.

I am *drafting* a resources page on *Weird Tales* that you can access here. I plan on throwing things informative and useful in here as I come across them.

I plan on devoting more time to substantively discussing *Weird Tales* writers, artists, and fiction in this blog—but now! Now is not the time. Now is the time to celebrate the simple pleasure of *acquisition.*

I’m really interested in the May 1944 edition because the cover was done by Margret Brundage. She was a famous illustrator and artist who did some very good covers for *Weird Tales* from 1933-1938; however, this is only of her last covers (her final *Weird Tales* cover came out in January of 1945). I feel like I’m becoming a broken record, but, ::sigh:: I hope to devote a series of posts to her specifically in the future.

Anyhow—happy holidays!