R'lyeh Review 022

R'LYEH REVIEW

Issue 022

Collected Poems: Nightmares and Visions
Richard L. Tierney
Arkham House, 1981, 82 pp. $10

(Reviewed by Lin Carter)

If you have been noticing some fine macabre verse by Tierney the last several years in publications like Whispers, Nyctalops, Weirdbook, and the like, the good news is that Arkham has published a bookfull of them. It makes a handsome addition to AH's select bookshelf of macabre verse; at 82 pages, it includes 67 poems, a hefty sampling of Tierney's best.

Many of the themes are drawn from the Mythos, others from Tolkien and Eddison. There are also five handsome translations from Baudelaire. Most of the verse in this book is excellent: for example, "Gods", a rousing ballad worthy of having come from the pen of Howard. My favorites are among the sonnets: "The Garrett-Room", "In Evil Dreams", and "The Pinnacles", but actually, all of the sonnets are good. The only real fault I can find in this selection is that there are just too many sonnets --- 46 sonnets out of 67 poems. The sonnet is a form that palls upon extended reading.

Occasionally, Tierney's ear falters: "Zarria" is nominally in iambic pentameter, i.e., ten syllables to the line. But some of the lines run to eleven, at least one to twelve. This is careless. Also, at times, the meter is distinctly inappropriate to the theme. "The Scrolls" is an example of this: the jaunty rhythm jars on the ear, spoiling what was meant to be a solemn, even a morbid piece of verse. Another example, "Hope", is a grim and bitter poem, ruined by its tripping, light meter, better suited to humorous verse. A brief quote will suffice:

The world's a dead harlot --- the corpse of a slut
Where death-vultures settle to rend and to glut
While Man flounders blind in the gloom ---
And Hope's a mirage on a desert of sand
Where horrors go ravening over the land,
And Life's but the road to doom.

At times, Tierney writes a line that makes you wince, as in the second line from this couplet from "Demon-Star":

To realms where hellish Algol blinks and leers,
Encircled by putrescent planetoids.

("Putrescent planetoids", forsooth! Sounds like the title of an Edmond Hamilton yarn, written on an off-day.) At other times, Tierney makes use of clumsy false rhymes, as:

Might stir to unguessed urges as it broods,
And softly rise to stalk the silent woods.

"Broods" and "woods" do not rhyme; there is nothing wrong with using false rhymes, if they are employed throughout the piece. But in this sonnet, "The Swamp Dweller", they are not.

At other times, more happily, Tierney is capable of writing a truly beautiful line of verse, such as

The amber-lambent highlights of your hair. . . .

(from "Dream"), and

Up steps that climbed through undefined dimensions

(from "Beyond the Maze"). In that last line, he makes excellent use of "heavy" sounds to build a mood.

Indeed, mood-building is Tierney's true talent; if the metrics don't always match the theme, if an occasional poor word-choice flaws a line (in one poem, Tierney uses "wham" as a verb, probably for the first time in the history of English verse), he displays a brilliant gift for building moods of somber gloom and haunting, gathering fear.

A fine collection of verse which belongs on every Crypt-reader's bookshelf.

"The Soul of Kephri"
Richard L. Tierney
Space & Time, number 66, Summer 1984

(The whole issue is 118 pp. and costs $4. It may be ordered from the editor: Gordon Linzner, 138 West 70th Street, Apt. 4-B, New York, NY 10023.)

(Reviewed by Robert M. Price)

It is a time when the fantasy field is dominated by interchangeable books with interchangeable titles like Elfstone Gambit and The Sorcerer's Suitcase. Adolescent "D and D" fans will apparently devour anything that reads like a role-playing scenario. In the face of this, many of us prefer to stick with the classics: Howard, Smith, Lovecraft, Tolkien, Burroughs, etc. Yet occasionally a fantasy character or series breaks from the mediocre pack, seeming to possess the old pizzazz. Karl Edward Wagner's Kane is such a one and has received due acclaim and publication. Another such is Richard L. Tierney's Simon of Gitta, whose adventures are a bit harder to obtain given their too-sparse and scattered publication. In our last "R'lyeh Review", we reported a new Simon story in Weirdbook 19, and now it is our glad duty to announce that another has seen the light of day in Space & Time 66.

"The Soul of Kephri" may be Tierney's best Simon tale yet. Tierney has several story-teller's talents, such as the ability to tie together disparate bits of historical and mythic lore into a bold and coherent premise, as well as the knack for employing Hyborian and Cthulhu Mythos elements in such a way as to tie the story into the Weird Tales cosmology without detracting from the story's originality, He uses these gifts to full advantage in "The Soul of Kephri". By the way, it is not difficult to spot influences on this story not only from REH and HPL, but also from George Lucas! But even these Tierney manages to weave into his seamless garment.

There are several more Simon of Gitta stories written and waiting to be published, and we may hope that more will appear soon. (Actually, we can do more than just hope --- just wait till the special Tierney issue of Crypt of Cthulhul!)

"The Soul of Kephri" is the cover story in Space & Time 66, and the cover and interior illustrations for the story are by Gary Kato. The influence of the great Steve Oitko is readily apparent in Kato's work, and it fits the story well. Needless to say, there is much, much more in the issue (including, e.g., a "Steel Eye", robot detective mystery by C. Gottfried), but Tierney's story alone would make it worth the $4.