From the Cauldron

This is a richly varied assortment, well-crafted and surefooted. Whether recalling the exotic realms of Clark Ashton Smith, the chaos-haunted New England of Lovecraft, or the minstrelsy of the high Middle Ages, Phillips is both lyrical and convincing. His weird nocturnal gardens are populated by very real toads.-Ann K. Schwader, author of The Worms Remember The rich tradition of weird poetry is alive and well in the work of Fred Phillips, whose poems run the gamut from medieval fantasy to sword-and-sorcery to supernatural horror. This substantial collection of his weird verse is the product of decades of work and reflects Phillips's wide-ranging interests in Celtic and Scandinavian myth as well as the exoticism of Clark Ashton Smith and the clutching terror of H. P. Lovecraft. A master of the sonnet, Phillips exhibits an effortless skill at formal verse patterns that brings Smith, Donald Wandrei, and George Sterling to mind. From the Cauldron introduces us to a seasoned poet whose sensitivity to the wonder and terror of the cosmos is unexcelled. Fred Phillips (b. 1937) began writing poetry during his senior year of high school. His work has appeared in The Cimmerian, Studies in the Fantastic, Weird Fiction Review and numerous amateur journals. He was the first Poet Laureate of the Eastern Kingdom of the Society for Creative Anachronism. A reader and collector of speculative fiction since the age of sixteen, he is also a founder of a book-collecting association, the Ancient and Honourable Order of the Drowned Rat.