There are those who will read anything by HPL. I remember one of S. T. Joshi's biographies that puts "Fair Ermentrude" (?) on the rack for several pages of analysis. Thanks, but no thanks!

But what I wondered about was this: what are the poems that, from your own experience of HPL's work, you'd recommend as worth reading other than by Lovecraft completists?

I suppose that, at a place like ED, the 36 Fungi from Yuggoth sonnets, "Nemesis," and "The Ancient Track," may be assumed. Is there anything else?

(I got thinking about this as a tangent to my recent return to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I've tended to assume[i] that one needn't bother with anything other than the priceless trio of [i]The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and "Kubla Khan," and a few other poems -- "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," the Dejection Ode, "Frost at Midnight," "The Pains of Sleep," and "Phantom" ("All look and likeness"). But STC wrote hundreds of pages more, so is that assumption really likely to be true?)

Psychopompos: A Tale in Rhyme

Not only is this, IMHO, his most important poem, it should also be counted among his stories.

"Fair Ermengarde" is HPL's least successful attempt at humor. Joshi calls it "hilarious", but I guess humor is in the eye of the beholder. I find "A Reminiscence of Samuel Johnson" to be much funnier. "Old Bugs" is also a bit funny, but you have to get the joke - this being one case where Joshi's paperback variorum version is actually the better edition, as the use of Galpin's full name drives home the joke. Finally, there is "Ibid", which maybe ranks above "Sweet Ermengarde" but it failed to amuse me.

"The Festival"
"The Outpost"

I like his seasonal and topographical poems best: "Old Christmas", "March", "April", "Spring", "A Rural Summer Eve", "Autumn", ... .

Thank you, Platypus and Knygatin!