Poetry Collections
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Long before the association with "Weird Tales" magazine and H.P. Lovecraft that led to his enduring fame, Clark Ashton Smith was a well-regarded regional poet whose tastes ran to the romantic and the fantastic. This collection of poems -- originally published in 1918 -- presents some of his best early work.
Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was a poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. His formal education was limited: he suffered from psychological disorders and for this reason attended only eight years of grammar school and never went to high school. However, he continued to teach himself after he left school, learning French and Spanish, and his nearphotographic memory allowed him to retain prodigious amounts from his very wide reading, including several entire dictionaries and encyclopedias. In his later youth he became the protege of the San Francisco poet George Sterling, who helped him to publish his first volume of poems, The Star-Treader and Other Poems, at the age of nineteen. The Star-Treader was received very favourably by American critics. Smith made the acquaintance of Sterling through a member of the local Auburn Monday Night Club, where he read several of his poems with considerable success. The publication of Ebony and Crystal in 1922 was followed by a fan letter from H. P. Lovecraft, which was the beginning of fifteen years of friendship and correspondence. His other works include: Odes and Sonnets (1918) and Sandalwood (1925).
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
This first omnibus collection of the poems of Clark Ashton Smith contains over five hundred sleections and reproduces entire volumes of verse long out of print as well as complete cycles of poems never before published in their entirety. From September 1944 to December 1949, in one way or another, Smith was invovled in the production of this book, revising old poems, creating new ones, and painstakingly preparing the manuscript himself during a time when he was having serious eye trouble. One of the most verbal and enthusiastic of Smith's early fans was H.P. Lovecraft who wrote to Smith (on a card postmarked February 9, 1923, Salem, Massachusetts): "Ebony and Crystal is titanic, cyclopean, marvelous!" He then went on to state: "The Hashish-Eater is the greatest imaginative poem in English literature.
Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was a poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. His formal education was limited: he suffered from psychological disorders and for this reason attended only eight years of grammar school and never went to high school. However, he continued to teach himself after he left school, learning French and Spanish, and his nearphotographic memory allowed him to retain prodigious amounts from his very wide reading, including several entire dictionaries and encyclopedias. In his later youth he became the protégé of the San Francisco poet George Sterling, who helped him to publish his first volume of poems, The Star-Treader and Other Poems, at the age of nineteen. The Star-Treader was received very favorably by American critics. Smith made the acquaintance of Sterling through a member of the local Auburn Monday Night Club, where he read several of his poems with considerable success. The publication of Ebony and Crystal in 1922 was followed by a fan letter from H. P. Lovecraft, which was the beginning of fifteen years of friendship and correspondence. His other works include: Odes and Sonnets (1918) and Sandalwood (1925).