The Book of Jade
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2024
Language: eng
Subjects: American poetry; Poetry
Description: <p>Anyone who reads <i>The Book of Jade</i> will quickly notice a few things: the author of this collection of poems holds a pessimistic, misanthropic view of life, and his obsessions lean towards the macabre, particularly focusing on themes of death, darkness, graves, corpses, and a longing to rest among the worms. The collection presents a world where God is portrayed as foolish, other people as imbeciles, and the fate of the dead as something to be envied. Certainly not light-hearted fare!</p> <p>Although <i>The Book of Jade</i> was initially published anonymously, it didn’t take long for readers to discover the identity of its author when the obituary of <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/david-park-barnitz">David Park Barnitz</a>, a young oriental studies scholar who passed away mere weeks after the book’s publication, admitted as much. Though somewhat uneven in quality, the work has garnered admiration from figures such as <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/h-p-lovecraft">H. P. Lovecraft</a>, Donald Wandrei, and Clark Ashton Smith, firmly establishing its place in the canon of decadent literature.</p> <p>This edition includes all the poems of the original 1901 edition, as well as the poem “After-Life,” which was published in <i>Overland Monthly</i>.</p>