Wade German is a poet firmly anchored in the Weird tradition. His verses are steeped in the dark, macabre worlds of classic writers of the strange and eerie like H.P Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Jack Vance.
You really need to get into a certain mindset to fully appreciate these poems. Read them at night in a quiet place, perhaps by the light of a nightstand lamp or a few flickering candles- real or LED. Let each word expand its full imagery. Let yourself be drawn into the glimpses of strange dimensions that German highlights in brief chiaroscuro of verse before taking you through the dark spaces to a new alien landscape.
Even the section titles demand careful consideration to unlock the nuances hidden in their words. How can one not be at least a little enthralled by titles like “Phantasmagorical Realms”, “Hypnogogic Terrain, or “Songs from the Nameless Hermitage”?
German’s style is not for everyone, of course. I often had to stop mid-poem to look up some odd, obscure word- an effort that would likely turn off a casual reader. Several of the poems use an odd device where a sentence from one stanza will repeat somewhere in the next one. I found this technique rather distracting and a little gimmicky after a while. Though I fully admit that I don’t know a whole lot about poetry, and have no doubt that there’s a very deliberate reason for this technique that would be enjoyable for someone who actually understood.
Because of these idiosyncrasies, it’s easy to simply skim over German’s poems as if you were watching scenery flash by outside your car window on a long trip. But it is definitely worth pulling to a stop on the side of the road, stepping outside in the cool of dusk and letting German unveil the haunted, galaxies in the sky above you.
You can get a copy of Dreams from a Black Nebula from Hippocampus Press
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