The Lovecraft Arts and Science Council frequently stages Arcade Asylum readings in the Westminster Arcade of Providence RI. One October the spell of these words exhorted attendees:
Sister, listen!… The King-Wolf howls!
The pack is running!… Drink down the brew,
Don the unearthly, shaggy cowls,—
We must be running too!
(“They Run Again”—Leah Bodine Drake)
Leah Bodine Drake (1904 – 1964) was foremost a poet. Her inaugural verse for Weird Tales, “In the Shadows”, debuted in the October 1935 issue, the start of nearly two dozen running in “The Unique Magazine.” Her first book of poetry, A Hornbook for Witches, was published in 1950 by Arkham House . It is one of the rarest titles from this imprint, its small run having been said to be partly funded by Drake herself.
“Time and the Sphinx” first appeared in Lilith Lorraine’s little magazine, Different. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction reprinted it in its February 1965 issue but it has not seen print since then.
This not only changes now but with further attention to Drake on the horizon–The Song of The Sun: Collected Writings by Leah Bodine Drake, edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, slated for publication hopefully later this year from Hippocampus Press. Among other selections, the book will contain more than 100 poems never previously published, three other pieces of fiction besides the following you are about to read, bibliography, illustrations by Jason Eckhardt, etc, ETC. totaling a staggering 760 pages. As well as a refutation that she subsidized publication of Hornbook. This long overdue recognition of a great woman writer will be a major event, Never Mind The Weird!
Let the following serve as a taster then. Consider it this Memento Book’s own Arkham Sampler, a dreamlike gem somewhat lost in time, now found. Dedicated to Lord Dunsany…