A paywalled chapter in the new book Hydrology and Its Discontents, “A Psychoanalysis of Wet Dreams”. Academia is still peddling Freud, Jung and Lacan into the 21st century, I see. But what’s this…

To chart a course through these hydrologic horrors, we invoke the spirit of H.P. Lovecraft, master of cosmic horror.

Well that’s a start, I suppose. I wonder if the author is aware of a Lovecraft ditty on the topic?

“(Wet) Dream Song”, a parody of a poet of amateur journalism called E.A. Edkins and “signed” by him in inverted commas, though definitely by Lovecraft…

“Oyster stew” here presumably being a euphemism for male masturbation. Which perhaps reveals an underlying reason for Lovecraft’s detestation of sea-food?

The “clamour of flowers / drove one quite frantic” on the beach is probably also a euphemism for bathing youth. One recalls Camus, evoking the beach of Oran in Algeria…

Oran also has its deserts of sand: its beaches. [ covered with flowers in winter, and girls in summer…] the sharp blue of the sky, everything makes one fancy summer — the golden youth then covering the beach, the long hours on the sand and the sudden softness of evening. Each year on these shores there is a new harvest of girls in flower. Apparently they have but one season. The following year, other cordial blossoms take their place […] (Personal Writings)

On the reverse of the card, presumably included with a letter and thus the correspondent is lost, Lovecraft writes… “I will illustrate the kind of [amateur pseudo-decadent] bilge I have in mind by by composing a parody here and now, currente Corona (*) and without apologies to any possible original or originals.” Which seems to imply that he was familar enough with Edkins’ work to parody it impromptu. The various dates, however, indicate that Lovecraft would not have gained his familiarity with Edkins’ work by revising it.

* meaning, with the current of ink still flowing from his Corona pen nib?

1920s Corona nib.

Lovecraft’s correspondent would likely have been attuned enough to see the subtle wit is his picking the word currente for a poem on the topic, in relation to a flowing pen-nib.