If you like Klarkash-Ton's prose poetry then you will probably enjoy
this little-known prose poem by E.R. Eddison. I found it in an
out-of-print edition of the Zimiamvian trilogy:



[untitled]

by E.R. Eddison (written 1930)

If you will taste the full meaning of these things, come with
me this May midnight before the moonrise to a garden I shall find for you, that goes down to a lake full of drowned stars and secret
unsounded deeps of darkness. An island garden, shadowed with oaks ten generations old and star-proof cedars and delicate-limbed close tufted strawberry trees; and in their shadow origin night-flowers, sweet-mouthed like brides in their first sleep, mixing their sweetness with the breath of eglantine fragrant with the dews of night. There, out of bushy darknesses, nightingale answers nightingale with that song that great lovers and great poets have ravished with their hearts to hear since the world began: that night-song, bitter-sweet, that
shakes the heart of darkness with longings and questionings too tumultuous for speech to fit or follow; and in that song the listener
hears echoing up the abysses of eternity voices of men and women unborn answering the voices of the dead. So to you and me, waiting on the Gods in this garden of heart's desire, strange things may be shown.

Thank you for sharing this. I rank Eddison quite highly. We discussed THE WORM OUROBOROS a couple of years ago IIRC.
Best, Scott

Thanks so much for sharing this excellent example of a very difficult form to master. I've always been particularly drawn to Smith's prose poems, and love to re-read them every now and then. It's a shame more poets don't take advantage of the unique benefits of this aesthetically pleasing form. Which book was this included in? Do you know if Eddison wrote more prose poems?
Thanks again,
Ron

Unfortunately, this is the only prose poem I know of by ERE (from the annotations of an edition of the Zimiamvian trilogy from 1992). However, certain chapters of the Zimiamvian trilogy are quite poetic. For example, this prose poem was partly incorporated (some lines verbatim) into the chapter called "A Night Piece on Ambremerine" from "Mistress of Mistresses".

I think the prose poem has the potential for tremendous expressiveness and power. I wish it was a more common form. I often like to read the prose poems by CAS.

I like the prose poems in "Fantastics and Other Fancies" by Lafcadio Hearn. I suspect that book influenced CAS.

It was his prose poems that first drew me to CAS. The first thing of his I read was 'Nostalgia of the Unknown', and I thought 'This is a writer I need to know more of.' Lovers of the form will also appreciate those of Arthur Machen, and there are many gems of fine prose embedded in the works of Cabell and Peake, as well as Eddison, which will probably appeal to CAS fans.

Although most of them are not prose poems per se, nor are they "weird" (with the possible exception of The Castle of Argol), I cannot recommend highly enough the works of the contemporary--although he's well into his nineties--French author Julien Gracq. His four novels are available in English translation, and are, to my mind, really more akin to extended poems in prose (especially the first two). Despite his working in prose and (nominally) in the novel form, I consider Gracq to be perhaps the finest poet of the Twentieth Century. He did publish a book of prose poems called Liberte' Grande, but it--like, sad to say, most of his writings--is in French only.