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Creep to Death
From the first edition's dust jacket...
Creep To Death assembles over eighty of the author's more recent poems, primarily in the horror-fantasy genre. It is his seventh book of poems.
Years ago, August Derleth stated: "Brennan is not adequately appreciated as a poet in America." The Capitol Times of Madison, Wisconsin perhaps summarized it best: "Joseph Payne Brennan is that kind of poet who may well be read years from now when the considerably more publicized among his contemporaries have been delegated to a relatively unimportant niche in American literary history."
Creep To Death assembles over eighty of the author's more recent poems, primarily in the horror-fantasy genre. It is his seventh book of poems.
Years ago, August Derleth stated: "Brennan is not adequately appreciated as a poet in America." The Capitol Times of Madison, Wisconsin perhaps summarized it best: "Joseph Payne Brennan is that kind of poet who may well be read years from now when the considerably more publicized among his contemporaries have been delegated to a relatively unimportant niche in American literary history."
- GenresHorror
124 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
About the author
Joseph Payne Brennan
136 books37 followersJoseph Payne Brennan was an American writer of fantasy and horror fiction, and also a poet. Brennan's first professional sale came in December 1940 with the publication of the poem, "When Snow Is Hung", which appeared in the Christian Science Monitor Home Forum, and he continued writing poetry up until the time of his death.
He is the father of Noel-Anne Brennan who has published several fantasy novels.
He is the father of Noel-Anne Brennan who has published several fantasy novels.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 7, 2011
MY ADOLESCENT DREAMS
My stubborn adolescent dreams
got incinerated
in the city dump.
Time's old battered truck
carted them away
one rainy summer's day
I trailed down littered gullies
looking for them,
probing in trash piles
All I ever found
was a flea-covered rat
curled up in a mildewed hat.
Creep To Death is a collection of dark poems by Joseph Payne Brennan. If you have heard of him, it is because of his excellent southern rural horror tales, the best known being "Hannigan's Back Yard". Yet on the whole, I think I like his poetry better. It is beautifully bleak. Most are impressionistic like the one above. Yet others are brief fiction in their own right. Another almost forgotten writer in the horror/fantasy genre who is due for a revival both for his fiction and poems.
My stubborn adolescent dreams
got incinerated
in the city dump.
Time's old battered truck
carted them away
one rainy summer's day
I trailed down littered gullies
looking for them,
probing in trash piles
All I ever found
was a flea-covered rat
curled up in a mildewed hat.
Creep To Death is a collection of dark poems by Joseph Payne Brennan. If you have heard of him, it is because of his excellent southern rural horror tales, the best known being "Hannigan's Back Yard". Yet on the whole, I think I like his poetry better. It is beautifully bleak. Most are impressionistic like the one above. Yet others are brief fiction in their own right. Another almost forgotten writer in the horror/fantasy genre who is due for a revival both for his fiction and poems.
October 30, 2015
Compared to Sixty Selected Poems, I'd say this is an inferior collection. Although a few pieces in here come close to the sublimely cosmic pessimism of Brennan's excellent "Substance," they are mostly lesser manifestations of his thoroughly bleak perspective.
"I Envy the Deer" nicely contrasts the pretentious solemnity of funerals with the unceremonious decay of a wild animal's carcass in the woods.
"At the Cemetery Gates" offers a pleasantly chilling take on the question of former lives.
For the most part though, Brennan's more supernatural horror-based material reads like the worst of Poe's verse: predictable takes on redundant themes, awkward rhymes and, at times, miserably generic.
Where Brennan thrives, however, is in works that reflect his naturalistic pessimism without excessively relying on a clichéd sense of the macabre. The persona of "The Cold Cliffs," the finest work in this collection, dreams of abandoning a futile life of continually fluctuating emotion and becoming one with the mute, oblivious stone of a sea side cliff. Along with "Epitaph for Earth," these poems succeed by virtue of how firmly they deny sentimentality by indicting all that is superfluous and superficial in human experience.
To the contrary, there are a few flashes of humor here. "The Collector" reveals how quickly the value of a recently deceased collector's possessions outweigh the memory of his life in the eyes of relatives. Likewise, "Death of a Minor Poet" gives another sardonic look at a man who is despised even more in death than in life. Having read these poems, I think Brennan might have been a more engaging poet if he had frequently allowed laughter into his darkness as opposed to his usually dirgeful tone.
Still, if only for the masterpiece of pessimistic poetry that is "Substance," I would recommend purchasing Brennan's Sixty Selected Poems before this collection.
"I Envy the Deer" nicely contrasts the pretentious solemnity of funerals with the unceremonious decay of a wild animal's carcass in the woods.
"At the Cemetery Gates" offers a pleasantly chilling take on the question of former lives.
For the most part though, Brennan's more supernatural horror-based material reads like the worst of Poe's verse: predictable takes on redundant themes, awkward rhymes and, at times, miserably generic.
Where Brennan thrives, however, is in works that reflect his naturalistic pessimism without excessively relying on a clichéd sense of the macabre. The persona of "The Cold Cliffs," the finest work in this collection, dreams of abandoning a futile life of continually fluctuating emotion and becoming one with the mute, oblivious stone of a sea side cliff. Along with "Epitaph for Earth," these poems succeed by virtue of how firmly they deny sentimentality by indicting all that is superfluous and superficial in human experience.
To the contrary, there are a few flashes of humor here. "The Collector" reveals how quickly the value of a recently deceased collector's possessions outweigh the memory of his life in the eyes of relatives. Likewise, "Death of a Minor Poet" gives another sardonic look at a man who is despised even more in death than in life. Having read these poems, I think Brennan might have been a more engaging poet if he had frequently allowed laughter into his darkness as opposed to his usually dirgeful tone.
Still, if only for the masterpiece of pessimistic poetry that is "Substance," I would recommend purchasing Brennan's Sixty Selected Poems before this collection.
November 24, 2018
So bleak. I adore this book. Ligotti has stated previously that the only fan letter he ever wrote was to JPB, praising the bleakness of his poetry. Here ye go...
Too many highlights to mention. Read this, and weep.
Too many highlights to mention. Read this, and weep.
December 30, 2019
These poems are dark. Some have elements of the supernatural, and some don't. But they all are powerful and emotionally wrenching. An excellent collection!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews