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Dream Quest, v. 1, issue 1, July 1947
Page 4
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AN ARKHAM "MUST!" DARK OF THE MOON, Poems of fantasy and the macabre, edited by August W. Derleth. 418 pages. Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin, $3.00. Sometimes priceless treasures of entertainment and relaxation are tossed casually aside by the poisonous apathy of prejudice. It is unfortunate, but true, that many of the most devoted of literary people cannot understand that poetry, when well done, has a charm and significance that often transcends the loftiest prose. in the field of the weird and fantastic, and -- yes -- even of the scientifictional, superb work in the pootic line has been created, and August Derleth, displaying a phenomenal reading range, has collected and had the courage to publish, in the largest $3.00 Arkham House book on his lists, an anthology of such verse. Despite the magnitude of all that has gone before it, I believe that dark of the moon rears up as one of the top books in the Arkham House chain. The reader may not care for poetry; the reviewer happens to be crazy about it; but every true fantasty fan must be warned that if he passes up this book he will live to regret it. The old masters are here. And they belong here, for, unlike the prose collections of the supernatural, this is to all intents and purposes the first comprehensive anthology of fantastic verse ever published. The only thing similar avaiable is a small section of a pocket book of verse edited by Louis Untermeyor, wich no more than whets the appetite. I would have been sorely peeved if Edgar Poe's "The Raven" had not been included. Probably one of the most popular and well-place it squarely in the designation of macabre verse. As it was, I missed "The Bells" which was not included, though "Ulalumo" is present. There are so many selections -- 160 of them, often as long as a standard short story -- that a comprehensive review is obviously impratical. However, of the tried and true you will find William Blake; Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas More, Goethe, John Keats, Thomas Hood, Longfellowm Tennyson, Richard Garnett, James Whitcomb Riley, A. E. Housman, Edward Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, Joyce Kilmer, William Rose Benet, etc., etc. Of the oldtimers, J. Sheridan Le Fanu's twelve-pager "The Legend of the Glaive" should prove of particular interest to the fans, as will the soldom-anthologized poems of Fitz-James O'Brien. Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" is scarcely to be missed, nor ir James Thomson's "The city of Dreadful Night." Fans who have read many quotations from Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" will be pleased to find that famous bit present in its entirety. walter de la Mare's famouse "The Listener" is present with two other selections as is Amy Lowell's "A
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AN ARKHAM "MUST!" DARK OF THE MOON, Poems of fantasy and the macabre, edited by August W. Derleth. 418 pages. Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin, $3.00. Sometimes priceless treasures of entertainment and relaxation are tossed casually aside by the poisonous apathy of prejudice. It is unfortunate, but true, that many of the most devoted of literary people cannot understand that poetry, when well done, has a charm and significance that often transcends the loftiest prose. in the field of the weird and fantastic, and -- yes -- even of the scientifictional, superb work in the pootic line has been created, and August Derleth, displaying a phenomenal reading range, has collected and had the courage to publish, in the largest $3.00 Arkham House book on his lists, an anthology of such verse. Despite the magnitude of all that has gone before it, I believe that dark of the moon rears up as one of the top books in the Arkham House chain. The reader may not care for poetry; the reviewer happens to be crazy about it; but every true fantasty fan must be warned that if he passes up this book he will live to regret it. The old masters are here. And they belong here, for, unlike the prose collections of the supernatural, this is to all intents and purposes the first comprehensive anthology of fantastic verse ever published. The only thing similar avaiable is a small section of a pocket book of verse edited by Louis Untermeyor, wich no more than whets the appetite. I would have been sorely peeved if Edgar Poe's "The Raven" had not been included. Probably one of the most popular and well-place it squarely in the designation of macabre verse. As it was, I missed "The Bells" which was not included, though "Ulalumo" is present. There are so many selections -- 160 of them, often as long as a standard short story -- that a comprehensive review is obviously impratical. However, of the tried and true you will find William Blake; Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas More, Goethe, John Keats, Thomas Hood, Longfellowm Tennyson, Richard Garnett, James Whitcomb Riley, A. E. Housman, Edward Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, Joyce Kilmer, William Rose Benet, etc., etc. Of the oldtimers, J. Sheridan Le Fanu's twelve-pager "The Legend of the Glaive" should prove of particular interest to the fans, as will the soldom-anthologized poems of Fitz-James O'Brien. Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" is scarcely to be missed, nor ir James Thomson's "The city of Dreadful Night." Fans who have read many quotations from Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" will be pleased to find that famous bit present in its entirety. walter de la Mare's famouse "The Listener" is present with two other selections as is Amy Lowell's "A
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