Now you've all heard of the pulps - that fabled flood of cheap magazines that not only nurtured writers as diverse as Raymond Chandler and HP Lovecraft, unleashed immortal characters like Sam Spade, The Shadow, Doc Savage and Conan the Barbarian, but also paved the way for both comic books and paperback editions.
However what many folk don't realize is that alongside the deluge of short stories, novellas and indeed novels, the pulps were pumping out, you'd also find poetry in their pages. And this was particularly true if the pulp in question was devoted to one of the fantastic genres (see HYPNOBOBS 69 - Weird Verse for more details on this link between weird fiction and poetry).
But if merely printing poems is surprising enough, it should also be noted that the verses you'd find in the pulps were just crammed in corners to fill a shortfall in column inches either. They were presented with the same love as the fiction, accompanied by lavish illustrations. And you see a particularly fine example of pulp poetry over at the SFFaudio blog here - where not only can you feast our eyes on some vintage ink and verse but also hear a reading of the text by Mr Jim Moon!
No comments:
Post a Comment