Sunday, August 5, 2018

Night


Read "Night" at The Eldritch Dark:


This poem is a logical counterpart to "The Sunrise", which I discussed in my last blog post. The personification of Night is quite powerful in these lines:


And Night, the sable queen, comes sombrely,
In dusky robes, with stars upon her breast.


The editor Scott Connors has quoted the Greek poet Simonides in discussing Clark Ashton Smith (CAS)*:

Painting is mute poetry, and poetry a speaking picture.

Simonides' observation seems highly relevant to the poem "Night", which presents strong imagery coupled with well-chosen verbs connoting a clear series of actions: "comes", "brings", "drops".  Thus the abstract character of Night becomes something living and breathing, in a mere eight lines of verse.


*See Connors' excellent essay "No Ordinary Person: The Drawings, Paintings, and Carvings of Clark Ashton Smith" in his recent volume In the Realms of Mystery and Wonder from Centipede Press.

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