Nathaniel Lindstrom has tackled a recorded reading of “The Poe-et’s Nightmare” by H.P. Lovecraft. The poem dates to sometime in 1916, and was first published in The Vagrant No. 8 (July 1918). The text is in the latest books of Lovecraft’s poetry, and also online here.

The narrator offers a clear and well-paced reading of this long poem in 20 minutes on YouTube, as the humorous intro Part One, the weird main section Part Two, and finally the outro in Part 3. So far as I’m aware this is the first ‘free and public’ complete reading of this seminal early expression of Lovecraft’s cosmicism.

The weird central section was reprinted and illustrated in Weird Tales for July 1952, with art by Jon Arfstrom.

The poem is perceptively analysed in detail by R. Boerem in “The Lovecraftian Nightmare”, to be found in the book H.P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism.