To Be Nobly Wild

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This week, we present a keynote lecture from the 2021 Inklings Festival… Dreamt in Fire: The Dreadful Ecstasy of Arthur Machen by Christopher Tompkins.

“This is the ecstatic alchemy of Arthur Machen, his mythopoeic vision: a perichoretic landscape built by hieroglyph upon hieroglyph, a world of symbols beneath clouds of images which seek to speak not to the intellect only, but to the nous, or the heart of the reader…   READ MORE.

Additionally, the Eighth Day Institute has posted Machen’s Let Us Keep the Tavern, one of the selections that can be found in the Dreamt in Fire collection.

NEW POETRY

After All, Heaven & Etc., Missing You by Joshua Alan Sturgill

Aer of Life by Mark Mosley

A Few Comments on Christianity and the Horror Genre

DSC01448This week, we present Sacraments & Ghosts, a lecture given by Christopher Tompkins at the 7th Annual Inklings Festival on October 23, 2021.

“Horror begins where the believer begins: we are transcendent. For a story to qualify as a work of horror, it must force an ontological crisis, that is, a crisis of being, for the characters, and to a lesser extent, for the reader…    READ MORE.

NEW POETRY

The Old Answers and Anyone Could Find It by Joshua Alan Sturgill

Books New & Found

Inklings-2021-Flyer-8This past weekend at the Inklings Festival, Darkly Bright Press released Dreamt in Fire: The Dreadful Ecstasy of Arthur Machen as a limited edition anthology. The Hardcover Edition is now Out of Print. (Some copies may still be available at Eighth Day Books.) Some remaining copies of the Paperback Edition can be purchased from the Catalog.

Additionally, four copies of the limited Levavi Oculos chapbook have surfaced. Richard Rohlin’s wonderful lecture on this story has increased demand. Don’t wait to buy!

Visit the Eighth Day Institute to read a brief essay on Machen. Additionally, you will find an article excerpted from A Reader of Curious Books.

More on the Inklings Festival coming soon… But for now…

NEW POETRY

Four new poems from Joshua Alan Sturgill:

Another Dream of Yellow Millet
Voyage
A System of Cross-Referenced Files
But If It Dies

Dreamt in Fire…

inklings-soft-1“…and there came to me a certain vision of a real world about us all the while, of a language that was only secret because we would not take the trouble to listen to it and discern it.”

Darkly Bright Press offers a new volume of stories and essays from the apostle of wonder. The literature of Arthur Machen is always an exploration into sacrament and landscape, replete with complex symbology. Dreamt in Fire: The Dreadful Ecstasy of Arthur Machen has been compiled and arranged to present an expansive survey of the master’s work without resorting to the over-anthologized texts found so easily in other collections. This goal of gathering “fresh” material while remaining representative of the writer’s long career illustrates a brilliant arc of depth and wonder.

Conceived as a companion piece to the upcoming Machen lectures, this collection will be released at the 2021 Inklings Festival in Wichita, Kansas as a limited edition of 50 copies.

NEW POETRY

Joshua Alan Sturgill: The Sea is Nothing & Nile

Mark Mosley:
When The Dying Are Unveiled
III: Burning Up
IV: Decensus

In the House of the Fisher King

Honoring an ancient tradition, we offer a Grail poem by Richard W. Rohlin. A Tolkien scholar, Rohlin will be a keynote lecturer at the upcoming Inklings Festival and will deliver two talks focusing on the Holy Grail.

PERCIVAL / Richard W. Rohlin

“Keep silent; do not look the fool!”
So the wise man said to me.
I obeyed and held my tongue
While a strange and solemn chanting rung
And tapers blazed like a thousand suns
In the house of the Fisher-king.

A young man came with a bloody lance,
And a maid with a plate of gold.
And a Virgin came with a golden Grail–
It was covered o’er with a silken veil–
And the candle light was shining, pale,
And the castle strange and cold.

She–the Virgin who bore the Grail–
Had a face I though I’d seen.
Once, long before, in a city cold
I saw a minster, ruined and old,
Where a maiden wept in carven stone
At the foot of a gallows tree.

“Keep silent! Do not look the fool!”
So I did as I was told.
And the whole procession, strange and glad
Came slowly on, in samite clad,
While the smoke of incense caught the shafts
Of light like liquid gold.

I held my peace. My silent host
Watched me with meaning glance.
“It will come again,” it seemed to say,
“The Grail and the plate and the Holy Maid;
One more chance have you to say:
‘How serves this Grail and Lance?’”

So his silence spoke. It came again–
And the Grail shone forth with light.
Again there passed the bloody lance,
And the maidens in their stately dance,
Then through a door it seemed to pass–
And I thought I saw a Knight.

A handsome lord, pale with pain,
Was lying hurt upon a bed.
The Virgin from the gallows-tree
Wept beside his bleeding knees
While close at hand a stone stood free
And the hall was hung with red.

I thought some words were written there–
Carved upon the stone:
CORPUS CHRIS– then all was dark,
And I sat alone with a broken heart
In an empty house and a silent yard
While the West Wind softly moaned.

NEW POETRY

Joshua Alan Sturgill: Primrose & Passing Through