A while back the works of H.P. Lovecraft were selected for the Library of America.  Here's an article about it, and him, from The New York Review of Books:

In other words, he was a nerd. He was a nerd on a grand scale, though— a heroic nerd, a pallid, translucent, Mallarméan nerd, a nerd who suffered for his art. His art consisted exclusively of conveying horror, and in this his range was encyclopedic. As a setting for his horror he built a whole world—a whole universe, with a time-span measured in eons—which others could happily continue furnishing indefinitely. His horrors themselves are, with a few unhappy exceptions, described loosely and suggestively enough that in effect they present a blank screen on which the reader can pro-ject whatever visual imagery is most personally unsettling. This explains the seeming paradox of an exceedingly bookish writer enjoying a legacy that is to a very large degree extraliterary. As a supplier of instruments for the cultivation of horror he was custom-tailored for the suggestible fourteen-year-old boy, and the number of fourteen-year-old boys—some of them chronologically rather older, a few of them even female—is continually on the increase.

Received by email from James Rummel, who was tipped by Alashiya.

Someone came here after searching "lovecraft poem ought to crawl."  This phrase is not from a poem, but from the short story The Festival.  The full sentence is, "Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."  It's supposed to be a passage from the Necronomicon.

The entire passage is:  "The nethermost caverns," wrote the mad Arab, "are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."

Try not to shudder doubly.

It's been a slow day with not much of anything to do, the way I like my Sundays (not like that Sunday a couple of weeks ago).  So I've been snooping around for graphics.  Found this very nice portrait:


And no, this is not a paid commercial, but because I appreciate creations like this, here are a couple of links.

The above was found at K.L. Turner's eBay store, which, unlike the vast majority of such stores, is used to sell original creations made by its proprietor.  More artwork can be found at Turner's CafePress shop.

I especially like the Pickman's Model coffee mug.