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bartlebybleaney's review
4.0
The juvenilia is, of course, uninspired and derivative, but anyone can be forgiven that, such being the rule rather than the exception. The fantasy and horror pieces are hit or miss, but contain that distinctly Lovecraftian note in places. "Providence" is an invocation of New England that is uneven but exquisite in places. The political poems mix warhawk jingoism with a genuinely moving love of country and culture. Lovecraft's send-up of Eliot is fairly spot-on.
Nothing in this collection of Lovecraft's poems, however, comes close to being as interesting, well-written, and interesting in its malignancy as the sonnet cycle "Fungi from Yuggoth". It's here that the Lovecraft of the cosmic horror and eldritch imaginings shows himself. A lot of the other pieces are either dully see-sawed couplets or of various passable stanza forms, but the sonnet seems to have been the most natural form to fit Lovecraft's by turns ironic and terrifying muse. The rest of the book may go to Cthulhu, but it's a shame these sonnets aren't better known; the four stars are really for them.
Nothing in this collection of Lovecraft's poems, however, comes close to being as interesting, well-written, and interesting in its malignancy as the sonnet cycle "Fungi from Yuggoth". It's here that the Lovecraft of the cosmic horror and eldritch imaginings shows himself. A lot of the other pieces are either dully see-sawed couplets or of various passable stanza forms, but the sonnet seems to have been the most natural form to fit Lovecraft's by turns ironic and terrifying muse. The rest of the book may go to Cthulhu, but it's a shame these sonnets aren't better known; the four stars are really for them.
ronweston's review
5.0
While this eBook with 87 poems is far from complete (Lovecraft composed more than 500), it probably contains more poems than other eBooks. For the most part the poems are those which are no longer under copyright, though I wonder about those first published in A Winter Wish in 1977 or in Joshi's The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H.P. Lovecraft in 2001. This collection does give easy access to some of HPL's better known poems "Fungi from Yuggoth," "The Outpost," "The Ancient Track," "Festival," and "Hallowe'en in a Suburb." Two pluses to this compilation: the poems are arranged in categories to indicate Lovecraft's poetic interests and the poems are properly formatted rather than just left justified. If one is looking for an introduction to Lovecraft's verse, and doesn't want to dip into the longer Joshi collections, this eBook is a good place to start.
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