Oracles from the Black Pool

In the past decade, D. L. Myers has established himself as one of the pioneering authors of weird poetry in our time. This first book of his poetry presents abundant evidence of his mastery of poetic idiom and imagery, in meticulous verse that scrupulously employs formal meter, rhyme, and a variety of verse forms ranging from the quatrain to the sonnet to the ballad and even to haiku.

Myers, following the model of Lovecraft and others, has devised his own realm of weirdness, Yorehaven, with its “crouching gambrel roofs” and “maze-like streets and alleys.” It is here that many of Myers’s most poignant horrors find their home.

While this book features vampires, werewolves, and other monsters from weird fiction’s storied past, many of the creatures populating Myers’s poems are of his own devising. And his range extends not only to subject-matter but to form, and we find here some mesmerizing examples of free verse and prose-poetry. His work uniquely lends itself to artistic representation, and noted artist Dan Sauer presents more than 20 illustrations that add a distinctive dimension to the poems.

D. L. Myers is a member of a poetic group called the Crimson Circle, and each of the other three members—K. A. Opperman, Ashley Dioses, and Adam Bolivar—have contributed poems in tribute to their colleague.