Thursday, November 8, 2018

The Tartarus of the Suns

Read "The Tartarus of the Suns" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/564/the-tartarus-of-the-suns

This sonnet really finds Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) playing to his strengths, with a mixture of Greek mythology, cosmic scope, and forbidding doom.  This description of "the nadir of all space", or a graveyard of planets and suns is thrilling for both its brevity and its immense scope.  

Moreover, there is some gorgeous language herein, really classic CAS phrases such as "Dethroned and aimless suns" and well as the epic closer, "And Night succeed unto their flaming thrones".  Few poets that I have read can deliver such a breathtaking experience in fourteen short lines of blank verse.

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