During the past decade or more, Ann K. Schwader has become the most critically acclaimed living author of weird and fantastic poetry. Following the distinguished tradition of Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, Frank Belknap Long, and others, Schwader has written scores of finely chiseled and powerfully evocative verse that packs all the intensity of a short story within the space of a sonnet or quatrain. The present volume gathers for the first time her collected weird poetry, including the complete contents of the landmark volume The Worms Remember (2001) and the sonnet cycle In the Yaddith Time (2007), along with dozens of uncollected and unpublished poems. All in all, this volume is the definitive collection of one of the most vibrant weird poets in contemporary literature.
Praise for Ann K. Schwader’s poetry:
The dark and enchanting verse of Ann K. Schwader weaves layers and labyrinths of wonder and beauty. Her work burns with language perfumed with mighty magic. It is not to be missed!
—Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
Ann K. Schwader’s intoxicating poetry is as authentically Lovecraftian as it is brilliantly original. This is poetry that is truly transporting. Superb!
—W. H. Pugmire
It takes more than mastery of rhyme, meter, euphony, and alliteration to preserve the emotional essence of the weird poetry of Lovecraft, Chambers, and Frank Belknap Long. Ann Schwader’s poetical vision re-evokes the same senses of terror based on the weird prose she offers in rhythmical form. It is as though one is reading the dreams of a gargoyle.
—Fred Phillips, author of From the Cauldron
Ann K. Schwader’s poetry fuses metrical precision and horrific imagination in a manner not seen since the heyday of Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. It suggests far more than it states, and its implications of dread menace are underscored by a cosmic pessimism that raises her work far above the level of mere shudder-coining.
—S. T. Joshi
If Yog-Sothoth knows the gate, is the gate, is the key and guardian of the gate, then likewise, Ann K. Schwader’s weird verse opens a gate to lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. Schwader’s verse—haunting, evocative, arresting in both conception and imagery—gibbers like Old Ones’ voices on the wind, and like the earth that mutters with Their consciousness.
—Leigh Blackmore, author of Spores from Sharnoth
ANN K. SCHWADER is a well-known and prolific poet, whose work is frequently anthologized. Her first poetry collection The Worms Remember was published by Joseph S. Pulver Sr.'s Hive Press in 2001, but is now out of print and hard to find. More recently, the sonnet sequence In the Yaddith Time was published as a slim volume by Mythos Books in 2007. Her fiction has been collected in Strange Stars and Alien Shadows (2003). In 2010 she won a Rhysling Award (Science Fiction Poetry Association award) for the poem "To Theia." Her dark SF poetry collection Wild Hunt of the Stars was a Bram Stroker Award nominee for 2010, as well.
This product was added to our catalog on Sunday 07 August, 2011.
