Spectral Realms 12, Winter 2020

This twelfth issue of Hippocampus Press's award-winning journal of weird poetry begins with David Barker's affecting acrostic sonnet in memory of the late W. H. Pugmire. Contributions by other leading contemporary poets--Leigh Blackmore, Frank Coffman, Adam Bolivar, Benjamin Blake, Christina Sng, and many others--are scattered throughout the issue. We also find vivid and evocative prose poems by Maxwell I. Gold, Manuel Arenas, and Wade German.

Thomas Tyrrell writes a poem in tribute of renowned fantaisiste Lord Dunsany; Don Webb evokes the shade of Edgar Allan Poe; Carl E Reed draws upon the work of Arthur Machen; and Manuel Pérez-Campos pays homage to the comic book Creepy. Nicole Cushing contributes a poem that fuses grimness and beauty, while Scott J. Couturier teases out the horrific potential of Greek myth.

Two classic reprints--by Ernest Dowson and Arthur Symons--hint at the bountiful stores of weirdness in poetry of the turn of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. S. T. Joshi offers his assessment of Wade German's recent poetry collection, while Donald Sidney-Fryer waxes eloquent about D. L .Myers's long-awaited omnibus.