Cats Poem by HP Lovecraft

[kiskadee]

I really enjoy HP Lovecraft's poems and have performed them for my weekly public access show.I hope to post clips of these pieces if anybody is interested.

 

[j d worthington]

Not often one runs across someone who reads Lovecraft's verse. I can't say that I "enjoy" (in the usual sense) some parts of his (rather extensive) verse; but there is a substantial amount of it which I do; and I find nearly all of it interesting in one way or another. Certainly, with his pastorals and the like, if one is not put off by the eighteenth-century approach of many of them, one can see a delightful sense of humor (including self-mockery) at work there; while a fair amount of his fantastic verse is quite good.

Nice to know someone is performing some of these. You won't be able to post a link for some time yet, but it would be interesting to hear some of them... there are some quite good readings available on YouTube at times....

 

[kiskadee]

Actually I don't read that much. But since I have come across HP Lovecraft's work, I am enjoying reading again.
I like his poems including the poet The Dead Bookworm. That's my favorite. I like the humour in it.

 

[j d worthington]

I'm also quite partial to "The Bookstall", which had a good deal of his dry wit. One of my favorite lines -- just as it is one which Joshi has quoted as quite delectable -- is "Go smell the drugs in Garth's Dispensary!" (l. 50), referring to the poem of that title by Sir Samuel Garth, an allegorical poem of some length and antique charm. (Garth was also the one who put together the edition of Ovid of which Lovecraft was so fond -- what HPL referred to as "that marvellous literary mosaic", Garth's Ovid; and the part of that which of he was fondest was, not surprisingly, The Metamorphoses, which had such an impact on his own fiction.)

Yes, when it came to his satirical poems, he was often quite good -- frequently barbed, but not infrequently as barbed at himself as others....

 

[kiskadee]

thanks JD. This is very informative. I shall look for it.

 

[j d worthington]

thanks JD. This is very informative. I shall look for it.

You are quite welcome. As I said, there is a substantial amount of his verse which cannot be enjoyed necessarily as verse, but (with amazingly few exceptions) it can be quite absorbing and even fun on other levels. One of my personal favorites is his verse play, Alfredo; a Tragedy, which is both a parody of the Elizabethan/Jacobean revenge tragedy, a spoof of himself and numerous of his friends and colleagues, and a tongue-in-cheek rebuke to a couple of his closest colleagues for their rather flighty and inconstant tendencies in their amours.... The only problem with this brilliant little piece is, in order to truly appreciate the various levels of humor, one needs a thorough familiarity with his tastes and private affairs, or a massively annotated edition. Even without all that, however, the piece is a delightful romp, and the fact that he wrote a play in the manner of those old revenge tragedies, which leaves but one of the dramatis personnae alive at the end, and then signed it as "by Beaumont and Fletcher", makes it an intensely entertaining read....

 

[dlsevern]

I really enjoy The Cats, in fact I recited it in my Speech class