Author Spotlight: W. H. Pugmire

Picking up where we left off, the next entry in our Author Spotlight series featuring contributors to A Darke Phantastique, we come to the one and only W. H. Pugmire. His entry is a beautiful sonnet. It is short, but sweet, so we can only offer a tease:

“Beyond the wooded realm the Seekonk weeps
For all the dreams that Time has washed away.
Over the liquid song I tilt and say
‘What Death has rendered mute the blank void keeps.'”…

When asked about the inspiration for the poem, he offered this:

“Well—what tempted me most was the warm, shallow, reed-grown Barrington River down the east short of the bay. I used to go there on my bicycle & look speculatively at it . . . How easy it would be to wade out among the rushes and lie face down in the warm water till oblivion came. There would be a certain gurgling or choking unpleasantness at first—but it would soon be over. Then the long peaceful night of non-existence.”—H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, February 4, 1934.

Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire has been writing Lovecraftian weird fiction and poetry since the early 1970s. His books include The Tangled Muse, Some Unknown Gulf of Night, Uncommon Places, and Bohemians of Sesqua Valley. He dwells in Seattle, where he reads H. P. Lovecraft perpetually and sings with Streisand.

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