Poem of the Day: ‘Fungi from Yuggoth’

The American writer John J. Miller (b. 1970) is a widely published, widely respected professor of journalism — and a lover of H.P. Lovecraft. Look at his book “Reading Around: Journalism on Authors, Artists, and Ideas” to get an idea of his range and his talent for tracing themes and ideas through a run of authors. The director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College in Michigan, Mr. Miller has written in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, and elsewhere of Lovecraft’s strange and slow growth into recognition as one of the great masters of horror. Here on All Souls’ Day, the Day of the Dead, we wanted to look at some of Lovecraft’s little-known poetry for the Poem of the Day Feature in The New York Sun. And so we turned to Mr. Miller to guide us with a selection and introduction.Guest editor John J. Miller writes:H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) was the greatest horror writer of the 20th century, and his reputation rests mainly on a handful of stories that he contributed to pulp magazines: “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Colour Out of Space,” “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” and a few others. Yet during the first phase of his career, he saw himself mainly as a poet, producing scores of poems that range from juvenile to competent. Around 1920, he began to focus more on the prose that allowed him to achieve what literary success he enjoyed during his lifetime. It wasn’t much. His fame as a master of his genre is almost entirely posthumous.In a week-long flash of activity as 1929 turned into 1930, he returned to his old métier, writing the pieces that comprise what may be his best work of poetry: “The Fungi from Yuggoth.” Although the title of this 36-sonnet cycle sounds like it belongs on the cover of a bad science-fiction novel, Lovecraft meant it seriously. He invented the word “Yuggoth,” he wrote, “to suggest certain words passed down from antiquity in the magical formulae contained in Moorish & Jewish manuscripts.” The loosely connected sonnets tap into many of the themes that animate Lovecraft’s fantasies: forbidden knowledge in ancient books, paranoid fears of cultish conspiracies, and the terrifying truths of a cruel universe.The sonnets often feel dreamy and vague, but they can arouse the imaginations of readers who let their minds wander “past the starry voids,” which is where Lovecraft locates Yuggoth in “Recognition,” the cycle’s fourth poem. Those who seek a surehanded guide to the sonnets may turn to an excellent source: an annotated volume edited by David E. Schultz and published by Hippocampus Press in 2017. Others, upon finishing “The Fungi from Yuggoth,” will want to plunge directly into the next thing Lovecraft wrote. That story, “The Whisperer in Darkness” — set mainly in the wilds of Vermont and in the wake of flooding that recalls the watery disasters of last July in the Green Mountain State — reveals much more about Yuggoth’s fungi, in what is now a classic of folk-horror fiction.Fungi from Yuggoth (a selection)by H.P. LovecraftI. The BookThe place was dark and dusty and half-lostIn tangles of old alleys near the quays,Reeking of strange things brought in from the seas,And with queer curls of fog that west winds tossed.Small lozenge panes, obscured by smoke and frost,Just shewed the books, in piles like twisted trees,Rotting from floor to roof — congeriesOf crumbling elder lore at little cost.I entered, charmed, and from a cobwebbed heapTook up the nearest tome and thumbed it through,Trembling at curious words that seemed to keepSome secret, monstrous if one only knew.Then, looking for some seller old in craft,I could find nothing but a voice that laughed.II. PursuitI held the book beneath my coat, at painsTo hide the thing from sight in such a place;Hurrying through the ancient harbor lanesWith often-turning head and nervous pace.Dull, furtive windows in old tottering brickPeered at me oddly as I hastened by,And thinking what they sheltered, I grew sickFor a redeeming glimpse of clean blue sky.No one had seen me take the thing — but stillA blank laugh echoed in my whirling head,And I could guess what nighted worlds of illLurked in that volume I had coveted.The way grew strange — the walls alike and madding — And far behind me, unseen feet were padding.III. The KeyI do not know what windings in the wasteOf those strange sea-lanes brought me home once more,But on my porch I trembled, white with hasteTo get inside and bolt the heavy door.I had the book that told the hidden wayAcross the void and through the space-hung screensThat hold the undimensioned worlds at bay,And keep lost aeons to their own demesnes.At last the key was mine to those vague visionsOf sunset spires and twilight woods that broodDim in the gulfs beyond this earth’s precisions,Lurking as memories of infinitude.The key was mine, but as I sat there mumbling,The attic window shook with a faint fumbling.IV. RecognitionThe day had come again, when as a childI saw — just once — that hollow of old oaks,Grey with a ground-mist that enfolds and chokesThe slinking shapes which madness has defiled.It was the same — an herbage rank and wildClings round an altar whose carved sign invokesThat Nameless One to whom a thousand smokesRose, aeons gone, from unclean towers up-piled.I saw the body spread on that dank stone,And knew those things which feasted were not men;I knew this strange, grey world was not my own,But Yuggoth, past the starry voids — and thenThe body shrieked at me with a dead cry,And all too late I knew that it was I!___________________________________________With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘Fungi from Yuggoth’

Poem of the Day: ‘Fungi from Yuggoth’

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