Poetical Quill Souls

Poetical Quill Souls

This blog contains a collection of renowned and young authors from around the world poems in the languages in which they were originally written. Each file includes author’s photo or portrait and brief biography. We offer news and announcements of interest to professional and amateur writers (writing competitions, poetry press, etc) too.

Este blog recoge una selección de poemas de reputados autores y jóvenes promesas de todo el mundo en las lenguas en las que fueron escritos originalmente. Se incluye en cada ficha una breve reseña biográfica del autor y fotos o cuadros de éste. Se complementa el grueso del material con datos de interés para escritores profesionales o aficionados a la literatura (como información sobre certámenes literarios, editoriales dedicadas a la poesía, etc).

Clark Ashton Smith

Almost Anything

Superlatively sonorous
Like a saxophone full of brass tacks and coffin-nails;
Reverberantly rhythmical and rhythmically reverberant
Like the quobbing of a foetus five months old
In the womb of a she-baboon;
Imperial, romantic and picturesque
Like a merd-brown fog slinking away through slum alleys
And over the city dump;
Fair and pulchritudinous as a female Hottentot with buttocks two axe-handles broad
And eyes that shine like rotten mackerel by moonlight;
More savorous than Gorgonzola buried for two months
At the bottom of a ship-load of guano;
Soft and voluptuous
Like the bosom of an acaleph that is more than slightly moribund;
And fragrant as a room
Where a cat was shut in by mistake. . .

But you say that my meaning is obscure,
And that it is hard to understand what I am referring to:
I ask you,
Hypocrite lecteur, mon sembable, mon frère,
What is the use of writing this modernist poetry
If one is not permitted
To be decently or indecently cryptic on occasion? . . .
And as for the meaning—
Well, I am not any too sure myself,
But if you are really determined to know,
I suggest that you refer the matter to some modernist critic.


Clark Ashton Smith (Long Valley, California, EE UU, 1893 – Pacific Grove, California, 1961). Poeta, escultor, pintor y escritor de cuentos.