The Book of Jade

New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015. Trade paperback, New,. Barbara Briggs Silbert. New York: Hippocampus Press:, 2015. Trade paperback, New, 322 pp. Cover artwork by: Barbara Briggs Silbert "H. P. Lovecraft referred to Park Barnitz as 'a vivid decadent of the fin de siècle period who modelled his verse on Baudelaire & killed himself soon after graduation from Harvard.' His one and only volume, The Book of Jade (1901), has become a legend in the realm of weird poetry, its technical precision and its relentless obsession with death, horror, madness, and pessimism making it a choice prize for appreciators of poetic witchery. But almost nothing is known about its young author, who died at the age of twenty-three. This comprehensive edition presents a wealth of material about David Park Barnitz-biographical, critical, and bibliographical. It contains the complete text of The Book of Jade along with additional poems and essays by Barnitz, some of which have never been reprinted. In addition, Gavin Callaghan has written an exhaustive biography that presents a fascinating portrait of the poet, delving into his family's ancestry and collecting widely scattered nuggets of information on Barnitz's life, work, and thought." This is a print-on-demand title.