During his lifetime and in the decade following his death, the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith has appeared in such volumes as "The Star Treader", "Odes and Sonnets", "Ebony and Crystal", "Sandalwood", "Nero", "The Dark Chateau", "Spells and Philtres", "Poems in Prose", and "Selected Poems".
The latter volume, published in 1971 by Arkham House, incorporated the poems published in the previous volumes. In addition, Roy Squires of California has produced several small booklets of Smith verse.
During his lengthy correspondence with Samuel Loveman, Smith sent a steady stream of poems to his friend. A handful of the more than 250 preserved by Loveman have apparently escaped publication to date. Thus we present here a sampling of the unpublished poems of Clark Ashton Smith. Most were written during the 1915-1930 period, which covered the bulk of the Smith-Loveman correspondence.
Since "Grotesques and Fantastiques" itself mainly with the artistic side of Smith these poems are presented as a bonus and are in no way an attempt to represent the best poetic efforts of the author.