Spectral Realms No. 22: Winter 2025

Spectral Realms #22

by S.T. Joshi (Editor), Ann K. Schwader, John Shirley

The twenty-second issue of Spectral Realms features its customary allotment of poems long and short by such leading figures as Ann K. Schwader, D. L. Myers, Scott J. Couturier, Wade German, John Shirley, Darrell Schweitzer, and Adam Bolivar. Lori R. Lopez’s long poem “Beastly” tells of terrors on the sea is matched by Ngo Binh Anh Khoa’s poetic narrative of death and madness. Carl E. Reed etches a grim account of the horrors of war. Among other items are Adele Gardner’s haunting Halloween poem, Manuel Pérez-Campos’s poetic interpretation of the paintings of Nicholas Roerich, Frank Coffman’s riff on the “King in Yellow” mythology, David Barker’s continuing poetic interpretations of Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth cycle, and David C. Kopaska-Merkel’s disturbing poem about a lamia. Prose poems by Manuel Arenas and Maxwell I. Gold also grace the issue.

Of the classic reprints, one is a weird poem by the celebrated Canadian poet Archibald Lampman and the other is a rare poem from Weird Tales by pulpmeister E. Hoffmann Price.

Kyle Lee Ward sensitively reviews a new poetry collection by Colleen Anderson, while S. T. Joshi assesses two scintillating volumes by K. A. Opperman.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Poems:
Lost in a Dream / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
I Spoke the Incantations / Scott J. Couturier
Heartbreak / Claire Smith
Weird Sisters Three / Manuel Arenas
Unpleasant Dreams / Geoffrey Reiter
The Hands That Hold Me / Joshua Green
Shell Shock: 2016 / Carl E. Reed
Amongst the Shelves / Lee Clark Zumpe
Beastly / Lori R. Lopez
The Lyre of Lúca / Adam Bolivar
Batrachian Prophets / Joshua Gage
at the edge of the sea / Kurt Newton
What Have You Done? / J. D. Dresner
Through the Darkness Shines . . . / Michael Potts
Last Cry unto the Night / Adam Amberden
A Swigger’s Saunter Down a Shunned Street / C. R. Molœny
Charnel Mysteries / Katherine Kerestman
Carcosan Shadows / Frank Coffman
When Daylight Dies / Andrew White
Credo / Manuel Pérez-Campos
The Aberration / Joshua Green
Due Diligence / DJ Tyrer
The Night-Traveler, by Day, Keeps His Secrets / Silvatiicus Riddle
In the Halls of the Dead / Ann K. Schwader
Crimson Dawn / D. L. Myers
Elemental Pact / William Clunie
The Necromancer’s Leman / David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Progeny / David Barker
Grave Bell / Scott J. Couturier
Where the Shadows Bleed / Lee Clark Zumpe
Casting Out / Ian Futter
The Great Night / Adele Gardner
Night of the Sorcerers / Wade German
I Hear the Numbers / Maxwell I. Gold
Three Sonnets of the Weird / John Shirley
I Know There Is a Sunrise / Darrell Schweitzer
Ghosts / Kurt Newton
Committed in Sanity / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
The Wells of the Weird: Ars Poetica / Carl E. Reed
Horror Home / Frank Coffman
The Blithebrook Fountain: A Folly / Steven Withrow
Five Full Moons / Jay Hardy
Ars Moriendi / Benjamin Blake
The Kingdom / Simon MacCulloch
Ratatoskr / Christian Dickinson
ghosts in trees / Lori R. Lopez
To Haunt Ancestral Tombs / Adam Bolivar
Fogs of Judgment / Janice Klain
Through Sunset’s Gates / David Barker
Young Friend / William Clunie
Arkham Boys’ Summer Afternoon / David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Fade / Lee Clark Zumpe
Cosmic Mind / Ron L Johnson II
Bedeviled Kiss / Ashley Dioses
Eager Pupil / Katherine Kerestman
A Colossus in Dream / Maxwell I. Gold
Emperor Julian in the Afterworld / Darrell Schweitzer
Among the Trees / F. J. Bergmann
What They Say / Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
Hypercathexis to a Sunken Spell / Manuel Pérez-Campos
Walker of Wastes / Scott J. Couturier
In a Garden of Hounds / Benjamin Blake
On the Himalayas of Nicholas Roerich's Series of Paintings / Manuel Pérez-Campos

Classic Reprints:
Midnight / Archibald Lampman
Adam to Lilith / E. Hoffmann Price

Reviews:
Fireside Poems / Kyla Lee Ward
Halloween Redux / S. T. Joshi


Cover artwork: Thorvald Niss (1842–1905), The Drowned Man's Ghost Tries to Claim a New Victim for the Sea

128 pages, Paperback

Published January 28, 2025

About the author

Sunand Tryambak Joshi is an Indian American literary scholar, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors. Besides what some critics consider to be the definitive biography of Lovecraft (H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, 1996), Joshi has written about Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, Lord Dunsany, and M.R. James, and has edited collections of their works.

His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and the dominant worldviews of the authors in question; his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy (namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dunsany, M. R. James, Bierce and Lovecraft), and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. A follow-up volume, The Modern Weird Tale, examines the work of modern writers, including Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, T. E. D. Klein and others, from a similar philosophically oriented viewpoint. The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) includes essays on Dennis Etchison, L. P. Hartley, Les Daniels, E. F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, L. P. Davies, Edward Lucas White, Rod Serling, Poppy Z. Brite and others.

Joshi is the editor of the small-press literary journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, published by Necronomicon Press. He is also the editor of Lovecraft Annual and co-editor of Dead Reckonings, both small-press journals published by Hippocampus Press.

In addition to literary criticism, Joshi has also edited books on atheism and social relations, including Documents of American Prejudice (1999), an annotated collection of American racist writings; In Her Place (2006), which collects written examples of prejudice against women; and Atheism: A Reader (2000), which collects atheistic writings by such people as Antony Flew, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, Gore Vidal and Carl Sagan, among others. An Agnostic Reader, collecting pieces by such writers as Isaac Asimov, John William Draper, Albert Einstein, Frederic Harrison, Thomas Henry Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, Corliss Lamont, Arthur Schopenhauer and Edward Westermarck, was published in 2007.

Joshi is also the author of God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003), an anti-religious polemic against various writers including C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley, Jr., William James, Stephen L. Carter, Annie Dillard, Reynolds Price, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Guenter Lewy, Neale Donald Walsch and Jerry Falwell, which is dedicated to theologian and fellow Lovecraft critic Robert M. Price.

In 2006 he published The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong, which criticised the political writings of such commentators as William F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, David and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly, William Bennett, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving and William Kristol, arguing that, despite the efforts of right-wing polemicists, the values of the American people have become steadily more liberal over time.

Joshi, who lives with his wife in Moravia, New York, has stated on his website that his most noteworthy achievements thus far have been his biography of Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life and The Weird Tale.

Reviews

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great poems as always!!

[Mick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another very enjoyable issue of Spectral Realms, and it is to the great credit of Hippocampus Press that they continue to publish this fine journal, the only one of which I am aware that is dedicated to weird poetry.
My favorite poem of this issue came from the master, Ngo Binh Anh Khoa, and is titled “What They Say.” It contrasts the hypocritical way in which villagers speak out against a local witch in public, while going to her for philtres and potions and spells in private. Lori R. Lopez contributes “ghosts in trees”, which is great fun. I greatly enjoy her light-hearted work.
There are many other excellent poems in this volume, too many to mention in a short review. But among my favorites were Darrel Schweitzer’s “Emperor Julian in the Afterworld”, about one of history’s most interesting figures, and Michael Potts’ “Through the Darkness Shines…” about one of horror fiction’s most interesting figures. But with contributions from such poets as Frank Coffman, Adam Bolivar, Katherine Kerestman, Manuel Perez-Campos, Ashley Dioses and so many others, how could this fail to achieve excellence?
Minor note: I don’t know why Goodreads always credits Spectral Realms to Ann Schwader. She is certainly one of the contributors, and a very welcome one, but it is edited by S.T. Joshi.

[Stefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This continues to be the best active publication of contemporary weird poetry.