Spectral Realms ― "Ghosts of 1816"

I am, yet again, unnaturally excited to announce that one of my poems, “Ghosts of 1816”, was recently published in Spectral Realms (Hippocampus Press) edited by S.T. Joshi.  This particular poem holds a rather special place in my heart for it was inspired by a long-held obsession of mine:  Frankenstein and the “Haunted Summer” of 1816.  Mary Shelley’s deliciously Gothic novel and the supposed laudanum- and ghost-story-induced madness that took place within the opulent walls of the Villa Diodati during that year without a summer has long fascinated me and piqued my imagination with bizarre and nightmarish visions—it was only a matter of time before I would paint the malefic shadows of my imagination within a poem.

Although I am beyond pleased that a publisher would accept such peculiar shadows of my imagination, I dare say that I am even more pleased—shocked, perhaps—to find one who would publish the poetic form that I decided to pen.  For the past year and a half I have written in a more contemporary hand; however, for this particular poem, begun in the summer of 2015, I decided to honor the writers and poets who inspired it with a more Romantic-era structure—a Gothic-dark, Keatsean ode of sorts.  And though my beloved Keats inspired the form, it was Mary Shelley and her “wicked” company who were responsible for the shadowy substance between the lines and, in this case, between the rhymes.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was the main ingredient, so to speak, paired with copious amounts of absinthe, but I also summoned a bit of Alpine inspiration from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” (1816), whose peaks “piercing the infinite sky” never fail to leave me in a “trance sublime and strange / To muse on my own separate phantasy”.  And though it was Percy’s poetic lines that initially brought me to supernal climes, it was my own experience while hiking and mountain climbing in the Swiss Alps in June of 2016 that introduced me to Nature’s Alpine witchery, whose silver-enchanted muse whispered to me most convincingly the strangest secrets of my own “separate phantasy”, which I embraced unquestioningly.  These new secrets, revealed to me while un-roped thousands of feet up and knee-deep in voluptuous snow, enshrouded within white-outs of pastel-cream cloud and, in one case, storm-purpled mist that surrounded me like night, led me to make several edits upon my Alpine-inspired stanza—such Romantic experiences were made for poetic thought.

It goes without saying that I included my dear Lord Byron, Dr. Polidori, and even Claire Clairmont within my poem, although it may take a bit of imagination to see and understand their specific influence.  But, without getting into any more detail, or revealing all of the madness between the lines, I’ll just end this little announcement by pasting the link to the anthology below, which is available worldwide on Amazon or via the publisher’s website at Hippocampus Press.


https://www.amazon.com/Spectral-Realms/dp/1614981914/