According to [redacted] over at the Robert E. Howard Foundation, there are less than ten copies of The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard left unsold. Rob also said that there are no plans at present to produce a fourth printing. I cannot stress enough what a fine collection this is. Both Leo Grin and myself (and others) have sung its praises. Ordering information can be found here.
This may be known to some of you, but apparently the Howard poem “Black Chant Imperial”, which was accepted by Weird Tales in June of 1930, and published that September, was a kind of first draft to another poem, “Empire: A Song for All Exiles”. The Complete Poetry makes this glaringly apparent by placing the poems back to back on pages 123-5, while inexplicably leaving off the subtitle. And Steve Eng calls the latter a “variant” of the first in his intro (page xlv), while also naming it a “howling ballad in thudding trochees.” Trochees are metric feet in which a stressed syllable alternates with an unstressed one. Wikipedia notes that trochaic form is rarely perfect in English, aside from “The Song of Hiawatha”, but notes also “The Raven” as an example. Howard no doubt was familiar with both.
Paul Herman passed on this helpful tip:
“Hey, I got an email from lulu, they are offering 20% off, just enter HOHOHO at checkout. Good till December 31.”
This means that [redacted]’s
[redacted], Frank Coffman’s The Selected Poetry of Robert E. Howard and the REHF’s The Collected Drawings of Robert E. Howard are all available at four-fifths the cover price until January 1, 2010.
In addition, two of Charles R. Saunders’ Sword-and-Sorcery novels, Imaro: The Trail of Bohu and Dossouye are available at Lulu. Dan Clore, Lovecraftian fictioneer and scholar, has his expanded second edition of The Unspeakable and Others for sale at lulu.com, with brand-new illustrations from top-flight Mythos artist, Allen Koszowski. All for twenty percent off. Merry Christmas.
I have seen some complaints about the title of the Howard collection from Penguin Modern Classics, Heroes in the Wind.
It doesn’t seem out of place to me. Evoking Kansas’ “Dust in the Wind” as it may, still, that’s a very Howardian sentiment.
See, for instance “The Wheel of Destiny” on page 410 of The Collected Poetry:
Across the great world’s silent girth
The gras-grown cities rot and rust:
Still are the rulers of the earth —
Men and their worth sink back to dust.
I think Howard would agree with Kansas that all we are is dust in the wind. The book itself is an odd mix of classic Howard and little-known stories, but not a bad introduction to a new readership. It gets no points from me for the cover, though.
REHupan (and Professor) Frank Coffman now has his Robert E. Howard: Selected Poems ready for online purchase at lulu.com. Here’s the info…
$23.50Ships in 3–5 business daysA large and representative selection of the poetic work of Robert E. Howard, with a general introductory essay, 30 chapter introductions, and commentary by Prof. Frank Coffman, one of the foremost authorities on Howard’s verse and “ways with words.”Three indexes add to the value of this ample selection: by title, by first lines, and a “Form Finder” index to allow quick access to Howard’s work with the ballad, the sonnet, blank verse, free verse and other forms and techniques.
Well over half of Howard’s more than 700 poems are included in this text, set in a text size and format for presentation that enhances readability and enjoyment. For those who are familiar with Howard’s prose fictional works, but who remain uninitiated in the many qualities and nuances of Howard’s verse, this compilation and commentary will offer insights into the complexity, quality and breadth of his work. For those who believe they know Howard’s poetic work, some new perspectives will broaden their appreciation.
I so love having The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard in my collection. After years and years of collecting Howard, I can literally open this book at random and find material I’m not familiar with. An example of this is “Arcadian Days”, found on pages 256 through 258. There’s a typo at the start: “Mape-limbed” is, in context, obviously supposed to be “ape-limbed.” The narrator is a blacksmith, who swears by Zeus and Jove, and meets a woman who is Dion’s — Dionysus? -– own (also referred to as an acolyte of Pan, who is Dionysus’s equivalent), “when the world was wild with Youth.” An interesting poem in many ways, and one I’d never seen before.
The Persian slaughtered the Apis Bull;
(Ammon-Ra is a darksome king.)
And the brain fermented beneath his skull.
(Egypt’s curse is a deathly thing.)
He rode on the desert raider’s track;
(Ammon-Ra is a darksome king.)
No man of his gleaming hosts came back,
And the dust winds drifted sombre and black.
(Egypt’s curse is a deathly thing.)
The eons passed on the desert land;
(Ammon-Ra is a darksome king.)
And a stranger trod the shifting sand.
(Egypt’s curse is a deathly thing.)
His idle hand disturbed the dead;
(Ammon-Ra is a darksome king.)
Til he found Cambysses’ skull of dread
Whence the frenzied brain so long had fled,
That once held terrible visions red.
(Egypt’s curse is a deathly thing.)
And an asp crawled from the dust inside
(Ammon-Ra is a darksome king.)
And the stranger fell and gibbered and died.
(Egypt’s curse is a deathly thing.)
“Skulls and Dust,” by Robert E. Howard
“No man of his gleaming hosts came back.” Indeed. What REH (and Herodotus) said. Verification of Herodotus’ tale concerning Cambyses’ lost army has been a long time coming (sort of like what Howard said about the Picts and the Basques). The archaeological findings of twin Italian brothers in the sands of the eastern Sahara might finally solve a millennia-old mystery. Naysayers have scoffed at the veracity of the Man From Halicarnassus, but they may have to rearrange their paradigms now.
I was still in high school when I found a copy of “Magazine of Horror” #19, the January 1968 issue. I had read some of Howard’s poetry by then, but mostly as headers in the fiction, and a few from comics, and an old Arkham anthology I found in a library, Fire and Sleet and Candlelight.
I remember how shocked I was by the clear-cut suicidal statement it was.
Better the silence and the long black rest;
Better the grey grass growing through my brain —
and
Better the shot, the fall, the growing stain,
Then one long blindness, shot with crimson pain
Howard speaks of black agony, iron thorns and womwood, gall and vemon, coming years that are long and gloomy black, and finishes with the thought “Even such brains as mine may crash to dust.”
The entire poem can be found on pages 412-3 of The Collected Poetry.
Later I would encounter other Howard poems in a similar light, like “The Tempter” in one of Dennis McHaney’s fanzines, and the two from Skull Face Omnibus, but none will ever succeed in shocking me as that first encounter with Howard’s death-wish expressions did. And to top it off, editor R.A.W.Lowndes used a spot illo from “Weird Tales” of Death on a horse riding a dusty trail to illustrate it. How spot on, as the British say.
Donald M. Grant died the other day in Florida. The name might not mean much to those but recently come to Robert E. Howard fandom. To REH fans like myself, who came of age before 1990, Donald M. Grant and the publishing company he founded represented a source of quality hardcovers featuring the fiction of Howard, Harold Lamb, Karl Edward Wagner and others that was unmatched anywhere else.
It took me a few years to realize that some of the Zebra paperbacks that introduced me to Robert E. Howard’s work originated as DMG hardcovers (cut me some slack, I wasn’t even a teenager). Once I did, I tried to get hold of such when I could afford them. Grant’s publishing house printed the first collection of Howard’s verse I ever owned. Donald M. Grant, Publishing, Inc. is still the only English-language publisher to have printed One Who Walked Alone and Post Oaks and Sand Roughs. While I own a beautiful copy of The Road of Azrael published by Mr. Grant, I am sad to say that an edition of the DMG The Sowers of the Thunder, generally considered one of the finest illustrated books to ever showcase the work of Robert E. Howard, eludes me. (Continue reading this post)
“Before Conan, there was Kane, a Puritan swordsman on a restless search for justice.”
That’s the lead-in from Nick Owchar’s, “Man in black: Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane,” published this May 24th in his monthly column for the Los Angeles Times. Owchar, deputy book editor for the LA Times, turns in a quite respectable piece on the Man From Devonshire (and his creator). His column, “The Siren’s Call” (a title I truly dig), was a joy and revelation once I (very recently) discovered it. Dear readers, brethren, kindred and fellow travellers, Ol’ Nick is one of us. Peruse his previous columns (future blog-fodder, for me) and tell me it ain’t so. (Continue reading this post)
