oneirophrenia | The Stress of Her Regard (or: Quick Work Update of The Night)

Swinburne is one of my alltime favorite poets, and it's always stirring to discover verses of his tacked up as epigraphs to chapters in favorite books. Such as the following:

I said, "she must be swift and white
And subtly warm and half perverse
And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite,
And like a snake's love lithe and fierce."

That's from Algernon Charles Swinburne's "Felise," one of my favorite of his poems (and one that, at least based on that small extract, I can now say I relate to very well!)--and I found it as epigraph to a chapter in Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard, an absolutely wonderful dark fantasy/historical novel that I am currently rereading for about the 19th time. I mean...how can you possible resist a book that follows Byron, Keats, and Shelley throughout their lives and their on-again/off-again attachments to vicious, stone-based vampire-like creatures whose bite fuels the poetic imagination even as it extends life...all to the detriment of those around them, thanks to the fact that the vampires are extraordinarily jealous wenches. I have certainly never encountered a better allegorical fantasy based on the concept of the Romantic muse, the beast that bleeds you even as it kisses you.

Too bad the book's been out-of-print for damnear twenty years, and can't even be had through Amazon.com for less than $300. I'd love to loan this book to everyone I know, but I can't...it's simply too precious and rare. Which is a weird thing to think about a gaudy paperback, but, hey....

Makes me want to write stuff now. So I believe I shall do so!