Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was a poet, whose poetry had quite a fair amount of acclaim. It of course did not pay the bills, and, despite recurring health problems, he spent both of his life doing manual labor to get by. It didn't help when the Great Depression struck and the same time his parents began to have health issues. By this point his poetry had brought him into contact with a lot of literary figures, so he helped ease the burdens slightly by writing fiction. There was more of a market for short stories in magazines, and Smith, with his poetic ability for verbal fireworks, fit in perfectly with the weird fiction market. Most of his fiction was published in Weird Tales, and to this day he is regarded as one of the 'big three' of Weird Tales, along with H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, with both of whom he had an extensive correspondence, despite the fact that they never met in person. His mother died in 1935, Howard died by suicide in 1936, Lovecraft by cancer in 1937, and in 1937 his father also died, so Smith, still overworked and enduring blow after blow, essentially stopped writing fiction. But he is often considered the best writer and in particular the best stylist of the Weird Fiction Golden Age.
During his fiction-writing period, Smith, wrote a lot of fiction. The next fortnightly book is Zothique: The Final Cycle, which consists of all of Smiths fiction that takes place in the setting of Zothique, the last inhabited continent of the dying Earth, when all the civilizations we have known have vanished without a trace, and the world has become a world of strange worshippers of strange gods, filled with demonism and sorcery and despair. The various stories were put together by Lin Carter, who tried to work out a coherent narrative chronology in doing so; Zothique: The Final Cycle is edited by Ronald Higer, who makes some adjustments and modifications to Carter's arrangement to get a result that fits more tightly with comments Smith himself made about the stories.
Zothique
by Clark Ashton SmithHe who has trod the shadows of Zothique
And looked upon the coal-red sun oblique,
Henceforth returns to no anterior land,
But haunts a later coast
Where cities crumble in the black sea-sand
And dead gods drink the brine.He who has known the gardens of Zothique
Where bleed the fruits torn by the simorgh's beak,
Savors no fruit of greener hemispheres:
In arbors uttermost,
In sunset cycles of the sombering years,
He sips an amaranth wine.He who has loved the wild girls of Zothique
Shall not come back a gentler love to seek,
Nor know the vampire's from the lover's kiss:
For him the scarlet ghost
Of Lilith from time's last necropolis
Rears amorous and malign.He who has sailed in galleys of Zothique
And seen the looming of strange spire and peak,
Must face again the sorcerer-sent typhoon,
And take the steerer's post
On far-poured oceans by the shifted moon
Or the re-shapen Sign.