Gothique du Grotesque

Imagine, if you will, a tall, cloaked figure walking down Bourbon Street in New Orleans, after midnight. It wears a ragged top hat and a loose charcoal overcoat that billows behind, as it walks with a strange lolloping gait. Perched beneath the top-hat brim, is a grinning skull, with hollow eye sockets. The figure has four arms extended; yes, four - like some weird Kaliesque hybrid, each skeletal hand holds a book and as it walks its terrible walk, it recites snippets of verse from the...
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Imagine, if you will, a tall, cloaked figure walking down Bourbon Street in New Orleans, after midnight. It wears a ragged top hat and a loose charcoal overcoat that billows behind, as it walks with a strange lolloping gait. Perched beneath the top-hat brim, is a grinning skull, with hollow eye sockets. The figure has four arms extended; yes, four - like some weird Kaliesque hybrid, each skeletal hand holds a book and as it walks its terrible walk, it recites snippets of verse from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, Dante Alighieri, Aleister Crowley and some Charles Baudelaire for good measure. Its grating voice booms down the alleys and streets and helpless drunk bystanders fall to the ground as the figure passes - the last terrible words they hear somehow beautiful, but deadly. For this is the aesthetic realm of the grim reaper - he is stalking the streets, a grim parade of his own creation, as he voices the lore of demons, the babbling curses of ancient witches, the very devil's verses. And so it is, that Sebastian Crow's Gothique du Grotesque, emerges from the shadows - born into the night to populate the reader's mind with all manner of things that go 'bump' in the night. Feast your eyes on the words that crawl across the page, filled with malice and mysticism - faint echoes of the Reaper's own preferred texts, echo from the dank chambers of hell. Crow has the uncanny ability to be both evocative and somehow timeless in his merging of the now and then. Of other worlds, best left unexplored, but all the more interesting for their revelations. Underlying it all is a cunning wit that subtly weaves these gothics lyrics into a dark tapestry that will delight readers of all predilections. The writing is sometimes formal, sometimes free, but always evocative and beguiling, with the felicitous use of language and style to render each poetic nightmare, a deep etching on the tombstone of your mind. Included in this fantastically diabolical collection are new poems and choice selections from previous works by the author. I first had the privilege of working with the author on an early collection, designing the cover for 'Succulent Flesh,' and since then have followed his writing with great interest. His work always moves in a forward direction with each new publication, while remaining consistently true to the gothic sensibility that is central to the author's aesthetic focus. Welcome to this gothic gallery of the grotesque. Sit down, relax (but make sure the doors are locked), pour yourself something strong to brace you for the parade ahead, be wary of tall top-hatted figures that may rap their bony knuckles on your window pane after midnight, and . . . turn the page.- William Cook, author of Blood Related & Corpus Delicti