IN THE GRAND TRADITION of Clark Ashton Smith, of H. P. Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth, of Edgar Allan Poe and George Sterling and other masters of Weird Poetry...


JOHN SHIRLEY-the Bram Stoker Award-winning writer, the noted novelist, author of Demons and Cellars and Lovecraft Alive and City Come A-Walkin' and Stormland and the A Song Called Youth trilogy and Black Butterflies, the songwriter, the lyricist for the Blue Öyster Cult... and frequent contributor to the weird poetry journal Spectral Realms-presents his first book of poems.


His themes range widely: from irony-infused cautionary tales to the dangers of romance in a vein of nightmare, to the diabolic glimpsed from the corners of the eye, to the lyricism of streetcorners, to the magic energy of inescapable regret, to cosmic horror, secret sovereigns, and apocalypse... leavened by subtle glimpses of hope.


This volume is lavishly illustrated by noted weird artist Dan Sauer, whose surreal photomontage work illuminates the savage beauty and dark epiphanies of Shirley's verse.