News of the new Sonnets of the Midnight Hours, a Fedogan & Bremer audio CD. Graham Plowman provides the musical score, underpinning theatrical readings of a cycle of 47 poems from Donald Wandrei. Who H.P. Lovecraft held in very high regard, along with the artist brother Howard. The poems arise from circa-1927, with Wandrei under the influence of both Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

This is a type of fantastic that mixed both science and fantasy, and that was common with the Lovecraft circle. You don’t get this sort of imagery after the Campbellian science fiction take over in the late 1930s. … His sonnet cycle is what probably sent H. P. Lovecraft off to create the “Fungi from Yuggoth” cycle that started appearing in Weird Tales in September 1930. Robert E. Howard produced his “Sonnets out of Bedlam” probably influenced either by Wandrei or Lovecraft or both.

[Picture: Howard Wandrei’s cover band illustration (front) for a 1964 collection of his brother’s poems.]

For modern print, Sanctity and Sin: The Collected Poems And Prose Poems Of Donald Wandrei (2008) seems the book to get, and can still be had at an affordable price in paperback.