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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastical, dream-filled, brooding verse,
By thomas gladysz (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: As dream and shadow (Hardcover)
Today, Emil Petaja (1915 - 2000) is best known as a writer of fantasy and science fiction. However, many of his first literary efforts were of an all-together different sort. Emil Petaja wrote poetry - fantastical, dream-filled, brooding verse. Early on, he won a "couple of minor regional poetry contests," and his work appeared in publications like Weird Tales, The Californian, and Stirring Science Stories. Petaja's two published books of poetry are "Brief Candle" (a mimeograph chapbook dating from around 1935), and "As Dream and Shadow" (an edition of 1000 hardback copies was published in 1972). This latter book - a sort of selected poems - collects work written largely in the 1930's and 1940's. (Other differently themed poetry - dating from the 1950's - remains unpublished.)
Science fiction and poetry may seem a strange mix, but the history of fantastic verse goes way back. Two of its significant 20th century practitioners include Clark Ashton Smith (a longtime friend of Petaja), and H. P. Lovecraft (with whom Petaja corresponded). Both influenced Petaja's efforts as a poet. The great illustrator Hannes Bok, whose friendship inspired some of these works, admired Petaja's verse enough that he drew four illustrations for a long narrative work, "Dark Roads." This book-length work, begun in 1931 when Petaja was 16, is excerpted in "As Dream and Shadow." (Also included are Bok's original illustrations, along with many other black and white works by this noted artist.) Petaja is by no means a great poet. His work is, at times, somewhat old-fashioned or even "tame" - as the author himself suggests in the introduction. Who were his other influences? This Montana-born writer lists Shakespeare's sonnets, Edith Sitwell and Edna St. Vincent Millay, as well as Coleridge, Yeats, Crane and Dickinson. At a time of revolutionary upheaval in American poetry, Petaja turned to past forms and idiosyncratic individuals for inspiration. Petaja's notable poems include sonnets dedicated to Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, both of whom expressed their admiration. Lovecraft said of "Lost Dream," "It has a genuine and pervasive grace, and a series of eminently powerful and appropriate images." Howard, commenting on "The Warrior," said, "I feel deeply honored that a poem of such fine merit should be dedicated to me. You seem to grasp the motif of my stories . . . more completely than any one I have yet encountered. This fine sonnet reveals your understanding of the abstractions I have tried to embody in these tales." Included in "As Dream and Shadow" is the Lovecraft-derived "Cthulhu Done It," as well as fine poems of personal feeling, such as "And Having Seen" and "Nova." Also of note is the seven sonnet sequence that comprises "On Listening to the Music of Jean Sibelius." This great Finnish composer, another artist who resisted the forces of change that swept the arts during the 20th century, is kindly served by these quiet homages.
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