Frank Coffman

ECLIPSE OF THE MOON is Frank Coffman's third major collection of speculative poetry. It follows THE COVEN'S HORNBOOK & OTHER POEMS (2019) and BLACK FLAMES & GLEAMING SHADOWS (2020). This collection features a long narrative, THE DECIPHERMENT (An Epyllion mini-epic]), a 72-title sonnet sequence featuring 111 sonnets (since some of the titles contain sequences within themselves), and a 57=quatrain Addendum to his 2019-published KHAYY M'S RUB IY T that renders Omar's (and the "Omarian School's" stanzas into English verse. Several genres of the speculative are represented: weird, horror, supernatural, science fiction, and myth, folklore, and legend. As with the previous two collections, the book also includes some traditional verse, some metapoetry (poems about poetry itself and the composition thereof) AND a complete "Glossary" of the many exotic, cross-cultural, and invented forms used therein. Frank Coffman has published speculative poetry and short fiction in a variety of magazines, anthologies, and collections, and his first two poetry books have received recommendations for consideration for the Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. He is also a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association and is the founder and moderator of the Weird Poets Society Facebook Group. "Unlike so many poets, if not most, restricted to the one string on their lyre of horror or the supernatural, Frank Coffman...has many strings to his lyre.... THE COVEN'S HORNBOOK & OTHER POEMS, alerted us to a major new voice in imaginative poetry.... As anyone who has experienced his work knows for a fact, he] is a master poet, a wizard of rime, meter, and form. Truly a grand and glorious traditionalist." -Master Bard, Donald Sidney-Fryer in a review in SPECTRAL REALMS #14

THE EXORCISED LYRIC is a collaboration of speculative poetry by Steven Withrow and Frank Coffman. It includes two collaborative sonnet sequences: "The Exorcised Lyric" and "Toward Solstice Station." The reader will also find 20 new individual poems by each of these formalist poets and both a cover and amazing interior illustrations by Paul "Mutartis" Boswell. This tome follows publications of individual collections by these established poets of the speculative: THE SUN SHIPS & OTHER POEMS, and THE BEDLAM PHILHARMONIC by Withrow; and THE COVEN'S HORNBOOK & OTHER POEMS and BLACK FLAMES & GLEAMING SHADOWS by Coffman. The two collaborations focus upon a haunted-perhaps possessed -minister and poet whose piously intended lines are somehow altered into blasphemies in the former sequence, and upon an time-and-space shifting trip by train that present the reader with, seemingly, the same father, mother, and daughter but traveling through different eras and places in a journey across America-East to West.

This twelfth issue of Hippocampus Press's award-winning journal of weird poetry begins with David Barker's affecting acrostic sonnet in memory of the late W. H. Pugmire. Contributions by other leading contemporary poets--Leigh Blackmore, Frank Coffman, Adam Bolivar, Benjamin Blake, Christina Sng, and many others--are scattered throughout the issue. We also find vivid and evocative prose poems by Maxwell I. Gold, Manuel Arenas, and Wade German. Thomas Tyrrell writes a poem in tribute of renowned fantaisiste Lord Dunsany; Don Webb evokes the shade of Edgar Allan Poe; Carl E Reed draws upon the work of Arthur Machen; and Manuel P rez-Campos pays homage to the comic book Creepy. Nicole Cushing contributes a poem that fuses grimness and beauty, while Scott J. Couturier teases out the horrific potential of Greek myth. Two classic reprints--by Ernest Dowson and Arthur Symons--hint at the bountiful stores of weirdness in poetry of the turn of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. S. T. Joshi offers his assessment of Wade German's recent poetry collection, while Donald Sidney-Fryer waxes eloquent about D. L . Myers's long-awaited omnibus.

This is the first anthology from THE WEIRD POETS SOCIEtY, a Facebook group open only to published poets in the various areas of Speculative and Higly Imaginative Literature. It represents a fine sampling of the range of topics and poetic styles of several of the members. It is hoped that this will become an annual anthology. This one represents poetry published in 2018 or not previously published.

Frank Coffman has rendered 327 quatrains from the traditional "Rub iy t" of Omar Khayy m into a new version in English verse. Differently phrased in many ways from the famous translation by Edward FitzGerald, Coffman's version is transposed from the great prose translation by Justin Huntly McCarthy. It presents the classic work by the famous Persian astronomer, mathematician, and poet in a new light for a new millennium of readers." Frank Coffman's renderings of Khayyam's 'Rub iy t' are a poetic triumph: Here the classic Persian quatrains are transformed into clean and radiant stanzas, each of which sparkles like a gemstone neatly cut and polished. Coffman's masterful prosodist's touch acts as a clarifying agent, drawing out the beauty inherent in the poetry as if through some form of lapidary alchemy. More than this technical achievement (and perhaps more importantly), Coffman's 'Rub iy t' is simply a pleasure to read. The verse pours from the page deliriously, like the ruby red wine to which so many of Khayyam's stanzas refer." Oliver Sheppard, poet and author of "Thirteen Nocturnes""Englishing the 'Rub iy t' after FitzGerald might be viewed as a light inteliectual game, but Frank Coffman brings to the task the craft and rigor of real work. Fortunately, however, he has not left out the ludic, playful aspects of Khayyam's Persian verses. This is a new translation for a new century." Steven Withrow, poet and author of "The Sun Ships & Other Poems"

Frank Coffman has compiled a substantial collection of 265 poems of verse in his book. The poems cover the gamut of the genres of speculative poetry of the high imagination: Horror, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adventure, and even Detection. Other sections of the book explore the range of subjects in the Weird, Horrific, and Supernatural. The Coven's Hornbook also contains a section of ekphrastic poems - tributes to works in other art forms; a group of homages to admired fellow poets; and a section of "metapoetry" with poems on the subject of poetry itself and some thoughts on the writing of verse.