February, 1932, unpublished until 1965

Cimmeria is a 32-line poem written in Texas about a distant prehistoric European homeland. Howard reflects on the terrain and weather of East Texas to invoke an image of his ancestral home. There is not a character in it, other than the “I” who does “remember”. Cimmeria is a landscape painting wrought with words. This poem is redolent with the notion of racial memory. It was not published until 1965 in The Howard Reader, and is now available as the lead entry in The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian. It rates as excellent atmospheric verse.

I do not understand how poetry works, but this poem works for me, particularly as a prologue to the Conan collection. Also, as a writer, it gives me hope that something unpublished of mine, might be enjoyed by some like-minded knucklehead long after my death.