The Voice before the Void: Arcana, Story, Poetry

An early poem.

“Oklahoma”

Ernest Hemingway

All of the Indians are dead

(A good Indian is a dead Indian)

Or riding in motor cars—

(the oil lands, you know, they’re all rich)

Smoke smarts my eyes,

Cottonwood twigs and buffalo dung

Smoke grey in the teepee—

(Or is it myopic trachoma)

The prairies are long,

The moon rises,

Ponies

Drag at their pickets.

The grass has gone brown in the summer—

(or is the hay crop failing)

Pull an arrow out:

If you break it

The wound closes.

Salt is good too

And wood ashes.

Pounding it throbs in the night—

(or is it the gonorrhea)

Categorically weird poetry.

-The Voice before the Void

“The Star-Treader”

Clark Ashton Smith

I

A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams,

Saying, “Make haste: the webs of death and birth

Are brushed away, and all the threads of earth

Wear to the breaking; spaceward gleams

Thine ancient pathway of the suns,

Whose flame is part of thee;

And deeps outreach immutably

Whose largeness runs

Through all thy spirit’s mystery.

Go forth, and tread unharmed the blaze

Of stars where through thou camest in old days;

Pierce without fear each vast

Whose hugeness crushed thee not within the past.

A hand strikes off the chains of Time,

A hand swings back the door of years;

Now fall earth’s bonds of gladness and of tears,

And opens the strait dream to space sublime.”

II

Who rides a dream, what hand shall stay!

What eye shall note or measure mete

His passage on a purpose fleet,

The thread and weaving of his way!

It caught me from the clasping world,

And swept beyond the brink of Sense,

My soul was flung, and poised, and whirled,

Like to a planet chained and hurled

With solar lightning strong and tense.

Swift as communicated rays

That leap from severed suns a gloom

Within whose waste no suns illume,

The wingèd dream fulfilled its ways.

Through years reversed and lit again

I followed that unending chain

Wherein the suns are links of light;

Retraced through lineal, ordered spheres

The twisting of the threads of years

In weavings wrought of noon and night;

Through stars and deeps I watched the dream unroll,

Those folds that form the raiment of the soul.

III

Enkindling dawns of memory,

Each sun had radiance to relume

A sealed, disused, and darkened room

Within the soul’s immensity.

Their alien ciphers shown and lit,

I understood what each had writ

Upon my spirit’s scroll;

Again I wore mine ancient lives,

And knew the freedom and the gyves

That formed and marked my soul.

IV

I delved in each forgotten mind,

The units that had builded me,

Whose deepnesses before were blind

And formless as infinity—

Knowing again each former world—

From planet unto planet whirled

Through gulfs that mightily divide

Like to an intervital sleep.

One world I found, where souls abide

Like winds that rest upon a rose;

Thereto they creep

To loose all burden of old woes.

And one I knew, where warp of pain

Is woven in the soul’s attire;

And one, where with new loveliness

Is strengthened Beauty’s olden chain—

Soft as a sound, and keen as fire—

In light no darkness may depress.

V

Where no terrestrial dreams had trod

My vision entered undismayed,

And Life her hidden realms displayed

To me as to a curious god.

Where colored suns of systems triplicate

Bestow on planets weird, ineffable,

Green light that orbs them like an outer sea,

And large auroral noons that alternate

With skies like sunset held without abate,

Life’s touch renewed incomprehensibly

The strains of mirth and grief’s harmonious spell.

Dead passions like to stars relit

Shone in the gloom of ways forgot;

Where crownless gods in darkness sit

The day was full on altars hot.

I heard—once more a part of it—

The central music of the Pleiades,

And to Alcyone my soul

Swayed with the stars that own her song’s control.

Unchallenged, glad I trod, a revenant

In worlds Edenic longly lost;

Or walked in spheres that sing to these,

O’er space no light has crossed,

Armistice Day:

A rebuke.

“The Next War”

Wilfred Owen

“War’s a joke for me and you,

While we know such dreams are true.”

Siegfried Sassoon

Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death,-

Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,-

Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.

We’ve sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,-

Our eyes wept, but our courage didn’t writhe.

He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed

Shrapnel. We chorussed when he sang aloft,

We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!

We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.

No soldier’s paid to kick against His powers.

We laughed, -knowing that better men would come,

And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags

He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.

“The Call of Cthulhu”

H.P. Lovecraft

Happy Halloween!

“Nightmare”

Clark Ashton Smith

As though a thousand vampires, from the day

Fleeing unseen, oppressed that nightly deep,

The straitening and darkened skies of sleep

Closed on the dreamland dale in which I lay.

Eternal tensions numbed the wings of time

While through unending narrow ways I sought

Awakening; up precipitous gloom I thought

To reach the dawn, far-pinnacled sublime.

Rejected at the closen gates of light

I turned, and down new dreams and shadows fled,

Where beetling shapes of veiled, colossal dread

With Gothic wings enormous arched the night.

Halloween:

The interesting story of Poe’s excellent story.

-The Voice before the Void

“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”

Wikipedia

“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe about a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death. An example of a tale of suspense and horror, it is also, to a certain degree, a hoax, as it was published without claiming to be fictional, and many at the time of publication (1845) took it to be a factual account. Poe toyed with this for a while before admitting it was a work of pure fiction in his marginalia.

Analysis

Poe uses particularly detailed descriptions and relatively high levels of gore in “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” displaying his own studies of medical texts. Valdemar’s eyes at one point leak a “profuse outflowing of a yellowish ichor,” for example, though Poe’s imagery in the story is best summed up in its final lines: “… his whole frame at once — within the space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk—crumbled—absolutely rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome—of detestable putrescence.” The disgusting imagery almost certainly inspired later fiction, including that of H.P. Lovecraft. These final lines incorporate shock, disgust, and uneasiness into one moment. The ending may also suggest that attempts to appropriate power over death have hideous results and are bound to be unsuccessful.

Jeffrey Meyers notes that “Valdemar” may be roughly translated as “valley of the sea,” perhaps suggesting both solid and liquid states, as emphasized in the imagery deployed as Valdemar’s body goes from its normal solid state to liquid in the final lines.

Poe typically uses teeth to symbolize mortality, as with “sepulchral and disgusting” horse’s teeth in “Metzengerstein,” the obsession with teeth in “Berenice,” and the sound of grating teeth in “Hop-Frog.”

Valdemar’s death by tuberculosis, and the attempts to postpone his death, may have been influenced by the experiences of Poe’s wife, Virginia. At the time the story was published, she had been suffering from tuberculosis for four years. Poe’s extreme detail in “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” may have been based on Virginia’s suffering. Additionally, Poe may have been inspired by Andrew Jackson Davis, whose lectures on mesmerism he had attended. Valdemar’s death, however, is not portrayed sentimentally as Poe’s typical theme of “the death of a beautiful woman” portrayed in other works such as “Ligeia” and “Morella.” In contrast, the death of this male character is brutal and sensational.

Publication history

While editor of The Broadway Journal, Poe printed a letter from a New York physician named Dr. A. Sidney Doane that recounted a surgical operation performed while a patient was “in a magnetic sleep”; the letter served as inspiration for Poe’s tale. “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” was published simultaneously in the December 20, 1845, issue of the Broadway Journal and the December 1845 issue of American Review: A Whig Journal—the latter journal used the title “The Facts of M. Valdemar’s Case.” It was also republished in England, first as a pamphlet edition as “Mesmerism in Articulo Mortis” and later as “The Last Days of M. Valdemar.”

Reception and critical response

Many readers thought that the story was a scientific report. Robert Collyer, an English magnetic healer visiting Boston, wrote to Poe saying that he himself had performed a similar act to revive a man w...

Halloween:

A classic, celebrated, unusual horror story.

-The Voice before the Void

“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”

Edgar Allan Poe

Of course I shall not pretend to consider it any matter for wonder, that the extraordinary case of M. Valdemar has excited discussion. It would have been a miracle had it not — especially under the circumstances. Through the desire of all parties concerned, to keep the affair from the public, at least for the present, or until we had farther opportunities for investigation — through our endeavors to effect this — a garbled or exaggerated account made its way into society, and became the source of many unpleasant misrepresentations; and, very naturally, of a great deal of disbelief.

It is now rendered necessary that I give the facts — as far as I comprehend them myself. They are, succinctly, these:

My attention, for the last three years, had been repeatedly drawn to the subject of Mesmerism; and, about nine months ago, it occurred to me, quite suddenly, that in the series of experiments made hitherto, there had been a very remarkable and most unaccountable omission: — no person had as yet been mesmerized in articulo mortis. It remained to be seen, first, whether, in such condition, there existed in the patient any susceptibility to the magnetic influence; secondly, whether, if any existed, it was impaired or increased by the condition; thirdly, to what extent, or for how long a period, the encroachments of Death might be arrested by the process. There were other points to be ascertained, but these most excited my curiosity — the last in especial, from the immensely important character of its consequences.

In looking around me for some subject by whose means I might test these particulars, I was brought to think of my friend, M. Ernest Valdemar, the well-known compiler of the “Bibliotheca Forensica,” and author (under the nom de plume of Issachar Marx) of the Polish versions of “Wallenstein” and “Gargantua.” M. Valdemar, who has resided principally at Harlem, N. Y., since the year 1839, is (or was) particularly noticeable for the extreme spareness of his person — his lower limbs much resembling those of John Randolph; and, also, for the whiteness of his whiskers, in violent contrast to the blackness of his hair — the latter, in consequence, being very generally mistaken for a wig. His temperament was markedly nervous, and rendered him a good subject for mesmeric experiment. On two or three occasions I had put him to sleep with little difficulty, but was disappointed in other results which his peculiar constitution had naturally led me to anticipate. His will was at no period positively, or thoroughly, under my control, and in regard to clairvoyance, I could accomplish with him nothing to be relied upon. I always attributed my failure at these points to the disordered state of his health. For some months previous to my becoming acquainted with him, his physicians had declared him in a confirmed phthisis. It was his custom, indeed, to speak calmly of his approaching dissolution, as of a matter neither to be avoided nor regretted.

When the ideas to which I have alluded first occurred to me, it was of course very natural that I should think of M. Valdemar. I knew the steady philosophy of the man too well to apprehend any scruples from him; and he had no relatives in America who would be likely to interfere. I spoke to him frankly upon the subject; and, to my surprise, his interest seemed vividly excited. I say to my surprise; for, although he had always yielded his person freely to my experiments, he had never before given me any tokens of sympathy with what I did. His disease was of that character which would admit of exact calculation in respect to the epoch of its termination in death; and it was finally arranged between us that he would send for me about twenty-four hours before the period announced by his physicians as that ...

one of ten winning stories in the 4th Lovecraftian Micro Fiction Contest at the 2017 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon in Portland, Oregon

“Looking into the Can”

The Voice before the Void

Autumn. Adventure.

-The Voice before the Void

“In a Canoe”

from The Great Divide

Windham Wyndham-Quin, 4th Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl

Among all the modes of progression hitherto invented by restless man, there is not one that can compare in respect of comfort and luxury with travelling in a birch-bark canoe. It is the poetry of progression. Along the bottom of the boat are laid blankets and bedding; a sort of wicker-work screen is sloped against the middle thwart, affording a delicious support to the back; and indolently, in your shirt sleeves if the day be warm, or well covered with a blanket if it is chilly, you sit or lie on this most luxurious of couches, and are propelled at a rapid rate over the smooth surface of a lake or down the swift current of some stream. If you want exercise, you can take a paddle yourself. If you prefer to be inactive, you can lie still and placidly survey the scenery, rising occasionally to have a shot at a wild duck; at intervals reading, smoking, and sleeping. Sleep, indeed, you will enjoy most luxuriously, for the rapid bounding motion of the canoe as it leaps forward at every impulse of the crew, the sharp quick beat of the paddles on the water, and the roll of their shafts against the gunwale, with the continuous hiss and ripple of the stream cleft by the curving prow, combine to make a most soothing soporific.

Dreamily you lie side by side—you and your friend—lazily gazing at the pine-covered shores and wooded islands of some unknown lake, the open book unheeded on your knee; the half-smoked pipe drops into your lap; your head sinks gently back; and you wander into dreamland, to awake presently and find yourself sweeping round the curve of some majestic river, whose shores are blazing with the rich crimson, brown, and gold of the maple and other hardwood trees in their autumn dress.

Presently the current quickens. The best man shifts his place from the stern to the bow, and stands ready with his long-handled paddle to twist the frail boat out of reach of hidden rocks. The men’s faces glow with excitement. Quicker and quicker flows the stream, breaking into little rapids, foaming round rocks, and rising in tumbling waves over the shallows. At a word from the bowman the crew redouble their efforts, the paddle shafts crash against the gunwale, the spray flies beneath the bending blades. The canoe shakes and quivers through all its fibres, leaping bodily at every stroke.

Before you is a seething mass of foam, its whiteness broken by horrid black rocks, one touch against whose jagged sides would rip the canoe into tatters and hurl you into eternity. Your ears are full of the roar of waters; waves leap up in all directions, as the river, maddened at obstruction, hurls itself through some narrow gorge. The bowman stands erect to take one look in silence, noting in that critical instant the line of deepest water; then bending to his work, with sharp, short words of command to the steersman, he directs the boat. The canoe seems to pitch headlong into space. Whack! comes a great wave over the bow; crash! comes another over the side. The bowman, his figure stooped, and his knees planted firmly against the sides, stands, with paddle poised in both hands, screaming to the crew to paddle hard; and the crew cheer and shout with excitement in return. You, too, get wild, and feel inclined to yell defiance to the roaring, hissing flood that madly dashes you from side to side. After the first plunge you are in a bewildering whirl of waters. The shore seems to fly past you. Crash! You are right on that rock, and (I don’t care who you are) you will feel your heart jump into your mouth, and you will catch the side with a grip that leaves a mark on your fingers afterwards. No! With a shriek of command to the steersman, and a plunge of his paddle, the bowman wrenches the canoe out of its course. Another stroke or two,

Halloween:

Cough. Ahem. Cough, cough.

-The Voice before the Void

“Horror Story Creative Writing Assignment”

Lanore

Text © copyright 2016 by Lanore. Phonorecord ℗ copyright 2017 by Lanore and The Voice before the Void. All rights reserved.