Some Unknown Gulf of Night

With SOME UNKNOWN GULF OF NIGHT, Wilum Pugmire continues his aesthetic exploration of the prose-poem and vignette sequence, many of which may be found in his last collection, THE TANGLED MUSE. With this new title from Arcane Wisdom Press we have a book-length sequence of semi-interconnected pieces, all of which are inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's superb sonnet sequence, FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH. Each numbered segment is an imaginative response to that numbered sonnet in Lovecraft's sequence, and Pugmire's Lovecraftian influence is the main force that drives this present work; yet other influences burrow from his fevered brain - Oscar Wilde, Edgar A. Poe, Baudelaire and the Decadents. Like some freakish soul who has lost his place in modern time, Pugmire's style is like that from another era, and yet it too is tainted by his neoteric experience as a punk rock queen and street transvestite. Like his literary heroes such as H. P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti and Henry James, Pugmire strives to create what he does not hesitate to call "literary art" - prose pieces that are beautifully poetic and imaginatively deranged. This perverse concoction is best when sipped slowly, occasionally, and this is not a book to rush through in one sitting. Let it plant its poisoned fungi gradually upon your innocent brain, and thus blemish forever your paltry soul.

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