Amazing Stories: Review: Cthulhu Haiku and Other Mythos Madness

 My latest review of a volume of Speculative Poetry went up today (three cheers for timeliness!)! It's of a volume of poetry, mostly haiku and other short poetry and fiction based on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. It came out several months ago, but I always said I would do a proper review (such as I'm capable of) one day.

Here's a teaser:

I mentioned Cthulhu Haiku and Other Mythos Madness, edited by Lester Smith (popcorn press) in a previous post, promising to review in full here in the future. The future has arrived.

First let me give you a little history. Cthulhu Haiku was a Kickstarter project, the first that I backed as a matter of fact. It was mentioned on SF Signal in their Crowdfunding Roundup column. The publisher, Popcorn Press is in Wisconsin and I like to support things from my home State. The theme also immediately made me think of one of my favorite poets alive, Ann K. Schwader, who is a celebrated Lovecraftian poet (see her collection of weird poetry Twisted in Dream), so I wrote her an email to make sure she was aware of the project. She wrote back thanking me for the heads-up (she hadn’t been aware, after all) and that she’d submitted a couple of weird poems and they’d been accepted for the volume! That was that, I jumped in and backed the project. In addition to “Cthulhu Haiku and Other Mythos Madness” I also received e-book copies of the 3 previous volumes in the “series” (a Halloween publication): “Hungry Dead”, 2010; “Vampyr Verse”, 2011; and “Halloween Haiku”, 2011. PLUS a wonderful full color ebook of “The Very Hungry Cthulhupillar” by Ben Mund and Signal Fire Press. It is not intended for young children!

Now, I have read precious little of H.P. Lovecraft’s actual fiction. I’ve probably read more Lovecraftian poetry and fiction by other people than by the man himself. The problem with doing it this way, is that most of it assumes that you’ve read Lovecraft widely and know to whom and what the various terms apply. Not having done that might leave you a little puzzled, with plenty flying over your head unaware of the significance....
To read more please head over to Amazing Stories here.

Enjoy! And listen to the audio all the way to the end. The last poem, by David C. Kopaska-Merkel is a stitch!

--------------