jeffhall's review
5.0
Clark Ashton Smith's (CAS) Poems in Prose is one of my all-time favorite books, containing within its 50-odd slim pages a wealth of gorgeous imagery, ideas, and inspirations. CAS possessed a powerfully evocative imagination paired with an extraordinary command of the English language, and although his short fiction and his "more regular" metrical poetry are both outstanding, the prose poems are in a league all by themselves.
It's hard for me to pick a favorite selection from this volume, but the vignette "The Broken Lute" is certainly representative, with its magical opening lines:
"Because you are silent to my lyric prayers, deaf to the melodies I have made from the sighs and murmurs of a wounded love, I have broken my golden lute, and cast it away, tarnished and unstrung, among the red leaves and faded roses of the September garden."
I've read CAS' prose poems multiple times in my life, and will certainly do so again and again. For me, these short pieces are a touchstone of the possibilities of verbal expression in my native language, and they are endlessly rewarding.
It's hard for me to pick a favorite selection from this volume, but the vignette "The Broken Lute" is certainly representative, with its magical opening lines:
"Because you are silent to my lyric prayers, deaf to the melodies I have made from the sighs and murmurs of a wounded love, I have broken my golden lute, and cast it away, tarnished and unstrung, among the red leaves and faded roses of the September garden."
I've read CAS' prose poems multiple times in my life, and will certainly do so again and again. For me, these short pieces are a touchstone of the possibilities of verbal expression in my native language, and they are endlessly rewarding.
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