Here’s an interesting blog post on Howard that is apparently four years old, yet I’d never come across it before. In between blasts of the too-cool-for-school style so common to pop-culture bloggers, you’ll find some solid red meat to chew on.

The ideological comparison with Plath is interesting. I’ve always liked her tombstone, which quotes the Hindu adage, “Even amidst fierce flames, the golden lotus can be planted.” One young woman, writing of Plath on her blog, nails the appeal — what one might call the Howardian essence — of her haunting verse:

Her poems are a world of fairytales gone terribly wrong…Her poems are unforgettable because they are, like her, at once violent and vulnerable. They speak, at once, to both the child and the beast within us.

Just so. The violent, vulnerable Texan would have heartily agreed.