The Star-Treader, and other poems
Cosmic Horror, Astral Landscapes, and Macabre Romantic Verse from an Early Decadent VisionaryBy Clark Ashton Smith
Length1h 19m
About this audiobook
The Star-Treader, and Other Poems presents Clark Ashton Smith's early poetic imagination in a mode at once visionary, macabre, and cosmological. Its poems move beyond ordinary landscape toward remote planets, occult immensities, dream realms, death, beauty, and the estrangement of the individual before the universe. Smith's elaborate diction, sonorous rhythms, and densely wrought imagery reveal the influence of Romanticism, French Symbolism, and the fin-de-siècle decadent tradition, while anticipating the cosmic fantasy and weird literature with which he would later be associated. The collection is thus both a volume of lyric poetry and a sustained experiment in constructing alternative realms through language. Smith was a largely self-educated writer from rural California whose intellectual life was formed through voracious reading, solitary artistic practice, and an early devotion to poetry. His work as a poet, painter, and sculptor nourished an unusually visual and sensuous style, while his fascination with mythology, astronomy, occultism, and the literature of the fantastic supplied the imaginative materials of this volume. Written before his celebrated prose cycles of Zothique, Hyperborea, and Averoigne, these poems illuminate the poetic foundations of his later fiction. Recommended for readers interested in Romantic and Symbolist poetry, decadent literature, and the origins of modern weird fiction, The Star-Treader rewards slow reading for its verbal richness and metaphysical ambition. It offers an essential introduction to Smith's distinctive genius: a poetry that transforms cosmic loneliness into sumptuous, unsettling art.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 3.9 (82)
Includes Goodreads
GenrePoetry
Length1 hr 19 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateNov 25, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Songs of the West (Annotated)
26THE POET
2III
27THE GODS TOGETHER
3IV
28A SUNSET
4V
29THE CLOUD-ISLANDS
5THE PRICE
30THE SNOW-BLOSSOMS
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6THE MYSTIC MEANING
31THE SUMMER MOON
7ODE TO MUSIC
32THE RETURN OF HYPERION
8THE LAST NIGHT
33LETHE
9ODE ON IMAGINATION
34ATLANTIS
10THE WIND AND THE MOON
35THE UNREVEALED
11LAMENT OF THE STARS
36THE ELDRITCH DARK
12THE MAZE OF SLEEP
37THE CHERRY-SNOWS
13THE WINDS
38FAIRY LANTERNS
14THE POET
39NIRVANA
15THE PHILOSOPHER
40THE NEMESIS OF SUNS
16THE POET
41WHITE DEATH
17THE PHILOSOPHER
42RETROSPECT AND FORECAST
18JOVE
43SHADOW OF NIGHTMARE
19PAN
44THE SONG OF A COMET
20ARTEMIS
45THE RETRIBUTION
21APOLLO
46TO THE DARKNESS
22APHRODITE
47A DREAM OF BEAUTY
23A NYMPH
48THE DREAM-BRIDGE
24ANOTHER NYMPH
49A LIVE-OAK LEAF
25ATÈ
50PINE NEEDLES
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