Unquiet Stars by Ann K. Schwader

Unquiet Stars is the ninth collection from Rhysling Award-winning speculative poet Ann K. Schwader. These poems of somber brilliance are equally magisterial as metrical formalism or as free verse. Complex and hypnotic, Schwader’s work leads us down—or out—into ancient darknesses that touch us where we live.

EDITIONS

Trade Paperback

• Color Cover
  
• In Stock

CONTRIBUTORS

Author: Ann K. Schwader
Editor: Joe Morey

PRAISE FOR ANN K. SCHWADER

“Ann K. Schwader is unquestionably one of the leading weird poets of our time. This new collection highlights the many virtues of her work: the meticulous crafting of every line, phrase, and word; a sense of the cosmic that brings Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith to mind; a deep understanding of the terror inherent in history and topography; and an enviable metrical versatility, which here includes even a few striking prose vignettes. No devotee of the weird will want to do without this scintillating volume.”
— S. T. Joshi, editor of Spectral Realms

“Schwader’s work concerns the crumbling edges of humanity, a littoral of death, myth and madness that is always within arm’s reach.… In “The Dark Reclaims Us”, she dubs us the “unnatural children of the sun”. More unnatural children … linger in the dark corners of the world…, the victims of cosmic processes.… There are ferocious reclamations here, of power and name.… But humanity’s ultimate fate awaits in the lightless void of space or the abysmal depths of the ocean, the gaping maw of Ammut.

The beauty of language laced with wit and irony, the perfection of structure, the potency of image, all mark this out as the work of a poet at her very peak. Schwader triumphantly achieves the complete integration of content and form.… I know it’s dark, she tells us, but come this way and mind the steps. For all the doom and sifting dust, there is compassion here, a reminder of the choices we do have in life and the difference they can make to others. This music holds power indeed.”
— Kyla Lee Ward, author of The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities