New on Archive.org, August Derleth’s Arkham Sampler #4 (Autumn 1948). The journal ran for eight issues. This issue’s highlight, today, is a ‘poem for voices’ by Derleth. Inspired by reading Lovecraft’s letters he imagines the shades of Lovecraft and Poe meeting at last, one night in Providence.

And here’s a picture to set the mood for a reading. It’s not been seen here before at Tentaclii, and is from my late summer 2019 haul of such pictures showing Lovecraft’s 66 College St and its surroundings. The two men are at the Van Wickle Gates at the top of College Street, only a moment’s walk from 66 College Street. In fact, given the timing in the 1940s, one wonders if the picture wasn’t inspired by Derleth’s 1948 poem.

I don’t know who holds Derleth’s copyrights these days, but if they’re sensible descendents then there may be potential here for a musical album. Of soundscape / found-sounds / low-key ‘night music’, combined into tracks evoking Providence at night in the 1930s/40s leading into a dramatised vocal performance of this poem with FX. Perhaps earlier in the album one might also have some of Poe’s more ‘cosmic’ lyrics and then Lovecraft’s churchyard letters/poem, both mentioned in the above poem, done in the same way.