Dancing Before Azathoth by Darrell Schweitzer
Hippocampus Press (November 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
For more than half a century, Darrell Schweitzer has been contributing poems of fantasy, horror, and the supernatural to countless venues. Dancing Before Azathoth is a major retrospective of Schweitzer’s verse over the past two or three decades, selecting the best poems from earlier collections — including Groping Toward the Light (2000) and Ghosts of Past and Future (2008) — with uncollected poems that have appeared in Weirdbook, Spectral Realms, Asimov’s, Space and Time, and other periodicals.
Dancing Before Azazoth is divided into four sections. The first section, in which the titular poem is located, is dedicated to Schweitzer’s tradtional horror and Weird verses. In the second section, readers are introduced to Schweitzer’s more mythic and historical poems. The third section is dedicated to poems that most readers would identify as science fiction, delving into all the wide and varied subgenres of that term. The last section is a selection of poems from Schweitzer’s previous collections. At over one hundred and fifty pages, this collection displays the depth and breadth of Schweitzer’s talents and poetic subjects.
Schweitzer’s main mode of poetry is clausal free verse. This is used throughout all the sections, from poems like “The Ghosts of Troy” to “Look Beyond.” It’s a serviceable enough style of poetry, and while it doesn’t lead to many rhythmic pleasures, it is cozy enough for most readers to settle into while reading. For example, “Glastonbury, 1995” begins:
Of course it was beautiful,
almost beyond words,
the Tor by moonlight,
the ruined tower at the summit
like a giant’s index finger
thrust into the velvet sky.
Yes, I felt the magic then.
There is no lyrical underpinning here nor do the line breaks evoke any urgency in the reading; these lines are meant to be subtle and follow the rhythms of speech in a way that coaxes the reader into their content.
That being said, this is not Schweitzer’s only mode. He often displays his attempts at more formal verse, as in poems like “The Howling House” and “Two Knights.” For readers who are more partial to these types of poems, Schweitzer does not disappoint. Take, for example, the poem “Dreads,” which begins:
What if our wizards are long-winded frauds,
and poor Tom’s just left a’cold,
and what if our specters are shadows and wind,
and half-garbled memories grown old?
This is a fun, rich ballad with rich imagery sure to please any reader of formal poetry.
No matter what type of poetry readers enjoy, Darrell Schweitzer’s Dancing Before Azathoth will have something for them. Whether it’s horror poems about werewolves, historical fantasy about WWII fairies, or a mad scientist’s lab assistant’s musings, Schweitzer has readers covered. This collection is so varied and Schweitzer has delved so thoroughly that there’s something here for every fan of poetry — horror, mythic, science fiction, and more — and readers will want to enjoy this collection as soon as possible.
