The Laughter of Ghouls

K. A. Opperman's The Laughter of Ghouls is a dark gem of endless depths in which one may see the decadent procession of exquisite darkness in which this poet revels -D. L. Myers, author of Oracles from the Black Pool For close to a decade, K. A. Opperman has been among the leading weird poets of our time. Bursting on the scene with the scintillating volume The Crimson Tome (published by Hippocampus Press in 2015), Opperman has consistently displayed a wide imaginative range, a metrical precision reminiscent of the work of George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith, and a sensitivity to the subtle overtones of the weird in daily life that make his poems far more than mere exercises in shudder-coining. The Laughter of Ghouls shows Opperman at the height of his poetic powers. The emphasis here is on ghouls as symbols of the fragility of our human mortality. Opperman's fascination with vampires male and female is displayed in a series of poems, while verses on the ghost, the werewolf, and the witch show the poet infusing new life into these traditional weird motifs. Throughout, Opperman exhibits all the qualities that have made him a pioneer in the renaissance of weird poetry that has been ongoing over the last several decades.…