Ebony and Crystal: Poems in Verse and Prose

Before Clark Ashton Smith became the architect of weird fiction who collaborated with H.P. Lovecraft, he was first and foremost a poet. Ebony and Crystal, his 1922 debut collection, reveals a writer absolutely intoxicated by language, crafting verses that sing with an almost dangerous beauty. The title itself announces the collection's central tension: darkness and light, shadow and transparency, the ebony of ancient night against the crystalline clarity of dream. Here are prose poems that blur the boundary between verse and prose, between waking and sleep, each one a small portal into worlds where cypresses whisper secrets and distant stars weep. Smith owes something to Poe's Gothic grandeur, but his sentences move with a natural music his predecessor rarely achieved. The decadent sensibility echoes Baudelaire, yet Smith carries it into distinctly American territory, where ancient longing meets modern alienation. These are poems for the midnight hour, for readers who want language to feel both luxurious and perilous.