Clark Ashton Smith was one of the most remarkable and distinctive American poets of the twentieth century. His tremendous output of poetry, totaling nearly 1000 original poems written over a span of more than fifty years, is of the highest craftsmanship and runs the gamut of subject matter from breathtaking cosmic verse about the stars and galaxies to plangent love poetry to pungent satire to delicate imitations of Japanese haiku. This edition prints, for the first time, Smith s entire poetic work, including hundreds of uncollected and unpublished poems. The poems have been arranged chronologically by date of writing, so far as can be ascertained. This first volume includes poetry from the first two to three decades of Smith s career, when he published such noteworthy volumes as The Star-Treader (1912), Ebony and Crystal (1922), and Sandalwood (1925). Smith s early work was written under the tutelage of the celebrated California poet George Sterling, but Smith quickly surpassed his mentor in the writing of cosmic and lyric verse. Smith s greatest poetic triumph, perhaps, was The Hashish-Eater, a poem of nearly 600 lines that strikingly evokes the myriad suns of unbounded space and the baleful monsters that may lurk therein. But Smith could also write such touching elegies as Requiescat in Pace, a dirge for a woman whose death affected him deeply.
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About the Author:
Clark Ashton Smith (1893 1961) is a towering figure in American poetry and in the literature of fantasy and horror. Born and raised in California, Smith early fell under the tutelage of George Sterling, and later established friendships with H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, Benjamin de Casseres, and other leading figures. His tales of exotic fantasy have achieved a worldwide audience, while his meticulously crafted poetry, published here in a complete edition for the first time, will establish him as a leading poetic voice in his time.
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