Poetry and the Gods
Created: February 2017
| Updated: February 2017
This article uses material from the Poetry and the Gods article on the Lovecraft wiki at Fandom and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License.
Overview
Poetry and the Gods is a short story by horror writer and poet H.P. Lovecraft in collaboration with writer Anna Helen Crofts. The story is very different from the vast majority of Lovecraft's other work and collaborations. It does, however, bear similar themes regarding dreams as a doorway to magic realms, and slumbering gods.
Synopsis
The narrative follows the dream-voyage of Marcia, a young woman filled with weariness of the mundane world and all its woes. She resolves to ease her troubled soul by reading a magazine of poetry. As she does, a dream-state unfolds in which the Greek god Hermes appears and bears Marcia to the court of Zeus and the Olympians. It is here that she sees Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and John Keats. The gods reveal that it is poets that sustain beauty in the world and whose work is reawakening the gods to bring wonder and magic back to the world. She is told that it is her destiny to meet the man who would be the world's next great poet. The story closes on Marcia, some time after, with her poet lover as he reads to her.