2020

Of The Three Musketeers wielding art duties for Necronomicon Press (The remaining duo being Jason Eckhardt and Allen Koszowski), Robert H. Knox rightfully crowns himself—by virtue of this volume alone—with the million-colored sun of worlds incredible: The Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith.

This imprint’s earlier series in square chapbook format, The Unexpurgated Clark Ashton Smith, utilized Knox’s talents which yielded an apogee design wise for the small weird press. Amberlithic artisanally separated colors were inherent in all their paper wraps, an exemplar being The Dweller in The Gulf (1987), the eyeless Martian ophidian of the title delineated in brilliant scarlet and verdigris over a xanthic field.

In a sense, Knox has collaborated with Smith before by way of color adaptations of CAS’ illustrations for H. P. Lovecraft’s Home Brewn “The Lurking Fear.” Inadvertently not credited in the recent New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham (2019: Norton), credit where due was given when these illustrations were first published in the stand-alone edition of the tale by Necronomicon Press.

It has been my gease to exhibit Robert Knox’s work in my stint as curator for the Ars Necronomica art exhibitions running 2013 through 2019. These included one of his supreme works, a definitive depiction of “The Tomb Spawn,” that bifurcated, beaked entity waiting beneath the sands of Zothique.

Not so much an influence on Knox’s oeuvre as hand in synchronicity over epochs would be the work of Max Ernst, esp. his series depicting the dreamscape La Ville Entière (1933-1937) or typified by collage work done in Une Semaine De Bonté (1935). Indeed, as Franklin Booth rendered his pen and ink illustrations according to the detail of wood engraving, so has Robert Knox taken Ernst’s collage/cut-up method and drawn his own juxtapositions by hand, an example being the plate “Bow down…” for the title poem in this present collection. He brings form, weight, and dimension even to the merest patterned hem of CAS’ sleeve. Another precursor, Richard Powers, with his paintings for Ballantine paperbacks in the early 1960s (such as the cover for the anthology Things With Claws) is an ancestral inhabitant of Knox’s painting The Ghooric Zone (2015) or, more recently, the cover for Robert Waugh’s The Tragic Thread in Science Fiction (2019: Hippocampus).

Visions of the outré in this expanded edition of The Hashish Eater list a startlingly correct interpretation of Smith’s “Surrealist Sonnet”; “Nero”—the physiognomy reminiscent of Clark Ashton Smith’s carvings or even the profile of his mentor George Sterling; and a depiction of “The sacred flower…of some red Antarean garden-world.” Knox’s livid floral arrangements for Klarkash-Ton in particular render him a worthy groundsman for Maâl Dweb—one waits for the burgeoning maturity of his own “Flower Women”…

Clark Ashton Smith once expressed the desire to focus on painting (as opposed to writing for financial concerns) to H. P. Lovecraft on January 9^th, 1930, to enjoy “nothing better than to fare forth in a debauch of form and color.” Robert H. Knox carries on these revelries, illuminating them for The Auburn Magus radiantly.

–The joey Zone

ANN and JEFF VANDERMEER, The Big Book of Modern Fantasy. New York: Vintage Books, 2020. 876 pp. $25.00 tpb. ISBN: 978-0-525-56386-0

  “The Ultimate Collection” presented here is “the last anthology together” from The Vandermeers. Supposedly.* Ninety-one stories include not only “A Mexican Fairy Tale” (1988) by Leonora Carrington but the gossamer-winged surreality of Carrington’s“Myth of 1,000 Eyes” (1950) scampering across the front wraps. For giving Carrington’s distinctive visual voice current mass market exposure, the editors should be commended alone.

  In The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (2019) and earlier anthologies such as The Weird (2011) The Vandermeers “tried to be objective about classic authors…for example, Robert E. Howard” and, heaven forfend, that “problematic” H. P. Lovecraft. For this Big Book, they seem to not be holding their editorial noses as much and are better for it. They are on surer footing among their contemporaries. They are not trying to define examples of “steampunk”, “The New Weird”, etc. or retrofit older works to support a thesis. Although there is a reiteration in this book’s introduction that “Fantasy becomes something of use to a writer to make a political or social statement. It’s not just a mode…” that seems to apply a lot less to a fair amount in this collection. There is no “agenda”, for example, to Garth Nix’s yarn “Beyond the Sea Gate of the Scholar-Pirates of Sarsköe” (2008) featuring the swashbuckling Sir Hereward and his superior, Mr. Fitz, a three and a half foot tall sorcerer—who also happens to be an animated puppet with a painted face on a papier–mâché head the size of a pumpkin. No agenda save fun.

  Three writers appeared previously in this volume’s Classic Fantasy companion. Two other stories,  (by Margaret St. Clair and Elizabeth Hand,) were already in The Weird. However, selections by J. G. Ballard, Paul Bowles and Gabriel Garcia Marquez are finally offered here due to publication rights clearing.

  The Marquez tale of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” is a perfect example of what some might call Magic Realism with an over abundance of magic pleasing this reader. Written in 1955, it is contemporary with similar work stateside by Ray Bradbury–especially his collection, The October Country which was also published in 1955–who is inexplicably not represented in this collection despite a mention in the introduction to the Greg Bear story in this volume. According to an Entertainment Weekly interview with the Vandermeers, Stephen King “really wanted to be in this anthology”. And is—it is a shame Bradbury is still not around to lobby for himself.

  In that same May 4^th interview, Anne Vandermeer speaks of “this huge world of influence, back and forth” among fantasy writers. Jack Vance’s “Liane The Wayfarer” (1950) included here is a mordant travelogue through The Dying Earth, that series long acknowledged as a worthy successor to Clark Ashton Smith’s tales of Zothique. M. John Harrison’s “The Luck in the Head” (1984) is a tale of Viriconium following that. And Jeff Vandermeer’s own tales of Ambergris—a new edition to be published December 2020—rests on those foundations (Far from suis generis, Vandermeer’s Borne (2017) has an ursine ancestor in Richard Adams’ Shardik (1974)—a writer also surprisingly absent in this book). Anne was an editor for Weird Tales from 2007-2011. She includes writers from that tenure: Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Ramsey Shehadeh and Erik Amundsen, the last whose “Bufo Rex” (2007) is a carbuncle of poisonous black humor.

  Fred Chappell’s “Linnaeus Forgets” (1977) is A Day In The Life of Carolus Linnaeus spent in his greenhouse, while “Alice in Prague or The Curious Room” (1990) by Angela Carter is—well, you should just read everything by this woman—dedicated to Jan Švankmajer and his film Alice (1988) but stars John Dee and his assistant—not Ed Kelley—but Ned Kelly the highwayman. “What is the use of books without pictures?” Dodgson’s Dreamchild would ask. Tove Jannson’s “Last Dragon in the World” (1962) has text and Jannson’s illustrations from this Tale of Moominvalley. The introduction to this Big Book mentioned “a preponderance of dragons.” This is the only one you’ll ever need. Utterly charming.

  “The Fey” is depicted from both sides of The Fields We Know: Sylvia Townsend Warner’s “Winged Creatures” (1974) and Caitlin Kiernan’s “La Peau Verte” 2005). Victor LaValle fights a troll! Well, in his modern folktale “I Left My Heart in Skaftafell” (2004) he does, while Maurice Richardson’s Engelbrecht goes “Ten Rounds with Grandfather Clock” (1946). Crazy stuff but it all works.

  These are all just highlights, but I must list at least one more. Rosario Ferré’s “The Youngest Doll” (1972) could have fit the editors’ criteria for The Weird. Women’s rights and income inequality are factors in this story, but it is foremost definitely one of the creepiest stories, you, Dead Reckonings reader, will ever come across. After all the anthologies Ann and Jeff Vandermeer have done, there are still stories we will be lucky(?) to get behind our eyelids. The legerdemain of this last collection being The Charm.

*The editors mention in this book’s introduction (as well as in some recent interviews) the idea to assemble an anthology of Latin American women fantasy writers. Given some pleasures proved in this Big Book, may bright doubts be cast on resolutions otherwise…

LEAH BODINE DRAKE, The Song of The Sun: Collected Writings. Edited by David E. Schultz. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2020. 767 pp. $30.00 (tpb: ISBN: 978-1-61498-267-8), $60.00 (hardcover: 978-1-61498-266-1).

1.

Besides its importance as a publisher of classic weird fiction and its attending scholarship, Hippocampus Press can not be lauded enough for its fealty to the muse of Verse. Keeping alive the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith, George Sterling, lesser-known lights including Park Barnitz and, even more importantly, contemporary voices such as Donald Sidney-Fryer (long may that troubadour write his songs!) is raison d’être alone for this press. On the horn of The Autumnal Equinox this collection finally appeared after being announced three years ago: An impressive volume in its physicality, with a 2-inch thick spine and the author’s signature in gold on the cloth under the front wraps. What August Derleth and Donald Wandrei did for H. P. Lovecraft’s legacy with the publication of The Outsider and Others in 1939, David Schultz does for Leah Bodine Drake now.

Drake’s A Hornbook for Witches (1950) was the first collection of poetry published by Arkham House, incorporating 47 poems. The Song of The Sun contains these and the rest of her 360 poems, 100 never previously published.

Besides appearing in the small press, Leah Bodine Drake had cracked the market of “the slicks”, including The Saturday Evening Post and The New Yorker. Above and beyond the biggest names in the Arkham House line (Lovecraft, Howard, etc.), she also garnered a positive review upon her first book’s release in The New York Times. Her 1939 verse “They Run Again” (Is there a better lycanthropic ode anywhere?) was quoted in full.

The Song also contains Drake’s short stories, 2 or which originally appeared in Weird Tales. The best of these is “Mop-Head” (1951) which was graced with an eldritch illumination by Joseph Eberle sadly not reproduced in this volume. In addition, there are essays and book reviews by her including “Whimsy and Whamsy” (1949) which—despite Drake’s lukewarm assessment—has this reviewer now not only looking for a copy of Stanley Mullen’s Moonfoam and Sorceries (Gorgon Press), but more of the “fan” art of its illustrator, Denver’s Roy V. Hunt. Hunt’s work proves to be worthy of rediscovery, some of it being unique takes in Lovecraftian art for that time or the present. Thank you, Leah!

There is a lengthy section of Drake’s letters including those to Weird Tales (extolling the work of Margaret Brundage, Virgil Finlay, CAS, Algernon Blackwood and others) and 73 to August Derleth alone. Finally, nearly 50 related photographs of Leah Bodine Drake as well as a comprehensive bibliography make this publication even more incredibly useful in re-establishing her importance beyond genre.

2.

Drake is one of the great poets of Faery. Some fine examples of this were published in A Hornbook (such as the classic “Changeling”), but one notable early (1933) narrative “The Ballad of Fair Elspeth” appears here for the first time. The theme of The Pied Piper is used not only in “The Little Piper” (1934) but in “Peddler’s Pack”. Written in 1939, it was later submitted to Anthony Boucher for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction but rejected. That publication’s loss is our gain.

A gnomish peddler offers The Good including

The missing star
From the Pleiad’s throng;
The opening bar
Of the sirens’ song

but upon their rejection, leaves only the detritus of The Bad that must be taken:

A weed from Bluebeard’s funeral-wreath,
Roots of mandrake, dragon’s teeth

There’s a moral for editors there somewhere!

Another inspiration to Drake is the work of Lord Dunsany. The poem “The Stranger” (1938) and prose “Time and the Sphinx” (1947) are both dedicated to him. The verse “Unhappy Ending” (1935) is the most Dunsanian of all, being a mordant tale similar to “The Hoard of The Gibbelins”.

Jason Eckhardt adds illustrations, 15 in number, to the mix. Two fine examples are that for “The Ballad of The Jabberwock” (1946) which concerns the legend(?) of The Jersey Devil and the one for “The Crows” (1955)—being one of Jason’s best works anywhere.

In 1941, Leah wrote in her short essay “To Be a Poet” that “You must feel moonlight, see the wind, taste sunlight and smell colour.” The best poetry summons visuals with its words. After seeing John Duncan’s Symbolist painting of 1923 Ivory, Apes and Peacocks, Drake wrote “The Journey of The Queen of Sheba” in 1937. Originally slated as the finale of A Hornbook for Witches, it was cut due to length as well as being deemed only “borderline fantastical” by the writer and her editor Derleth. May we be able to tarry near these borders longer—it is the standout piece in this collection.

She sat in a peacock-shade throne
On a grey beast out of myth, whose walk
Woke the thunder beneath the ground,
And whose tusks were inlaid with orichalch.

Coming down

From slopes of the Mountains of the Moon
Where rivers are born and dragons hiss;
Plumes of ostrich, and ivory horns
Heaped with spices and ambergris.

Bejeweled verse such as this could have suitably adorned any one of Lin Carter’s anthologies for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series back in the day.

3.

It is necessary for a poet to be steeped in some great tradition of mysticism.
—John Livingston Lowes

Lowes was a Harvard professor whose seminal work was The Road to Xanadu (1927), an examination of S. T. Coleridge’s sources (and one of this reviewer’s most treasured volumes on the shelf). This quote was appended to Drake’s essay “A Poem Should Have” from one of her personal scrapbooks. By her own rite, Leah Bodine drake’s entire oeuvre is part of this great tradition, woven into the tapestry of imagination.

I respectfully take exception to her own evaluation of her work, however. In “Minor Poet” (1947) Drake relates that

On mornings when no withered leaf
Rattled a branch, I’ve watched the strange
Dance of the lonely hippogriff,
Wings folded—still beyond the range

Of my crude weapon!

For someone who had enjoyed popular reception of her art during her life, Leah Bodine Drake still wanted more. Her “heart fully aware of the legacy of myth” (Schultz) that makes us who we are was her greatest crude weapon. For fantasy readers, this collection is as good a gateway to poetry as any. The magick of her art is accessible as starlight reflected in dew drops on that withered leaf held in one’s hand.