This second volume of Clark Ashton Smith’s complete original poetry contains the poems he wrote in the decades following the death in 1926 of his early mentor, George Sterling. Although much affected by Sterling’s passing, Smith carried on in his poetic work, seeking new modes of expression and expanding his range beyond the cosmic and lyrical verse that had dominated his early career.
Having taught himself French in the mid-1920s, Smith began composing original poems in French, also translating them into English or translating his earlier English poems into French. Although Smith wrote relatively little verse during the period of his extensive writing of fantastic fiction (1929–35), he resumed work in the later 1930s, especially under the influence of his friends Eric Barker and Madelynne Greene, for whom he wrote the poetic cycle entitled The Hill of Dionysus. In the late 1940s he experimented with imitations of Japanese haiku, and in the 1950s, having taught himself Spanish, he wrote numerous original poems in Spanish. Also among his later output are a number of witty satires on the vagaries of modern poetry. In its entirety, Clark Ashton Smith’s work stands as one of the great literary contributions to twentieth-century poetry.
All poems have been textually corrected by consultation with manuscripts and early appearances, and have been extensively annotated by editors S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. This volume also contains an exhaustive commentary on all the poems and a complete title and first line index.
This product was added to our catalog on Friday 26 March, 2010.
