Few today would refute these simple facts: 1) Halloween is the yearly holiday when all things spooky, ghoulish, and outré are celebrated, and 2) H.P. Lovecraft is one of the towering titans of speculative fiction. What happens when you combine these two thoughts together? You get dark and dank poetry. I’m not kidding, or rather tricking.
Specifically, in the hallowed year of 1926, when he made the fateful decision to return to his native Providence after many years in the New York wilderness, Lovecraft penned a poetic ode to Halloween. Entitled, “Hallowe’en in a Suburb,” the poem ranks among Lovecraft’s best and most popular. Its themes are immortal because Halloween is an eternal celebration with roots stretching back to the pre-Christian practices of the Celts. The poem invokes familiar monstrosities (vampires, harpies, the dead) and similar horror imagery, while also maintaining a firm footing in the rational world, i.e., the poem is told (theoretically) from the vantage point of a midnight rambler out walking among suburban homes on Halloween.
Here is the poem in full:
The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,
And the trees have a silver glare;
Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,
And the harpies of upper air,
That flutter and laugh and stare.For the village dead to the moon outspread
Never shone in the sunset's gleam,
But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep
Where the rivers of madness stream
Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.A chill wind weaves through the rows of sheaves
In the meadows that shimmer pale,
And comes to twine where the headstones shine
And the ghouls of the churchyard wail
For harvests that fly and fail.Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change
That tore from the past its own
Can quicken this hour, when a spectral power
Spreads sleep o'er the cosmic throne,
And looses the vast unknown.So here again stretch the vale and plain
That moons long-forgotten saw,
And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,
Sprung out of the tomb's black maw
To shake all the world with awe.And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,
The ugliness and the pest
Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,
Shall some day be with the rest,
And brood with the shades unblest.Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark,
And the leprous spires ascend;
For new and old alike in the fold
Of horror and death are penned,
For the hounds of Time to rend.
“Hallowe’en in a Suburb” proves that Lovecraft, like Robert E. Howard, was an underrated poet. I would argue that no Halloween-themed poem is better. However, in the spirit of the best horror film franchises, I decided to pen a sequel to Mr. Lovecraft’s poem last autumn. Because I care deeply about originality, I decided to call it “Hallowe’en in a Suburb, Part II.” This poem and others will be included in a forthcoming poetry collection from Terror House Press.
Here it is:
The barking lemurs are silent,
and the white, wild moonlight is drowned out
by electricity.
No vampires, no silver glare.
No harpies circling in the cold air.
All that remains is the unnamable aroma
of fallen leaves and shedding trees;
the staccato of empty houses
commingled in the night
with plastic fright.
The suburb once had kids going door-to-door.
But now, with morning closing in,
the ritual seems thin.
All the locked doors implore:
"Keep out, there's doom about."
The ghouls left stand alone,
asking where it all went wrong.
For how long,
and how deep
does it creep?
The true horror of the age:
nothing more than loneliness;
a plague of ghosts.
Hallowe'en only stops
the daily hell for most.
I will not ask which one you prefer, but I will ask something else: have you considered writing your own Halloween poetry? We here at the Bizarchives would like to see more weird pulp poetry out in the world, and we are calling all creeps (that’s you lot) to create their own foul verses for spooky season.
Send us your fiendish follies in the comments or bother us on social media. Who knows? Maybe when the full moon is bright, we may settle down on stygian evening to compile a weird poetry chapbook for your morbid delight.
Happy Halloween.