This anniversary—like that of Gene Day—crept upon me. I knew it was Klarkash-Ton’s deathdate, but I forgot the numerical significance. I have a major post to do tomorrow and this milestone just slipped my mind. Time for some off-the-cuff commentary.

Here we are, sixty years after Clark left us. When he died, it had been over twenty years since he'd written seriously for the pulps. Always a tomcat, prowling the streets of Auburn for the stray(-ing) poetry-loving housewife or proto-hipster ingenue, CAS had finally settled down and gotten married. Despite all that—or because of it?—Smith wrote his final sword-and-sorcery tale, 'The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles' in 1958.

"What?!?", you say. "Surely, Clark Ashton Smith never wrote any tales of S&S. Somebody on Facebook said he didn't!"

Wrong. The basics were laid out right here, but that isn't what this blog entry is about.

Clark Ashton Smith is, indisputably, one of the great Elder Statesmen of American weird fiction/SFF. He had his first collection of poetry published in hardcover--as a teenager--the same year that Edgar Rice Burroughs saw 'Under the Moons of Mars'—since known as A Princess of Mars—published in the pulps. Ambrose Bierce was a fan of CAS. Arthur Machen favorably reviewed Clark's book, astonished at such maturity and skill from a poet so young.

A decade later, H.P. Lovecraft--having read some of Clark's verse--wrote a letter to CAS in 1922. HPL was hat-in-hand, hoping for a reply from the Bard of Auburn; a total fan-boy. Their fascinating correspondence has recently been collected in Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill. Later on, Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner and Fritz Leiber would all correspond with 'Klarkash-Ton' (as HPL dubbed him in August of 1928). REH told Clark that he would give his 'trigger-finger' to write poetry like the Bard of Auburn. Around the same time, A. Merritt began a correspondence with CAS--thanks to HPL--which would affect the plot of Creep, Shadow, Creep.

So, here we are in 2021. The intense, hyper-literate, lapidary style of CAS is decidedly not in fashion. All the better, I say. Separate the wheat from the chaff. I, myself, do not prefer to read prose in the style of Clark Ashton Smith each and every single day. Then again, I would rather read only Klarkash-Ton's works for the rest of my life than read much of what constitutes 'modern literature’—of whatever variety—today. Thankfully, we have the likes of D.M. Ritzlin, Byron Roberts, Matthew Pungitore, John R. Fultz and others who carry the torch.

Clark Ashton Smith was both a visionary and a reactionary. He drew his inspirations from then-current scientific findings and from deep wells of English/Western literature. When one's foundations are the self-evident awesomeness of the cosmos and the Greco-Roman heritage of the West, then you've built your legacy on something classic and enduring.

I've said it before and I'll say it once more: His like will not be seen again. Another sixty years from now, discerning readers will still be searching out tales and poems from the Bard of Auburn.

As always, the premiere CAS website is The Eldritch Dark.