Frank Coffman
Frank Coffman-Writer
Hello, my name is Frank Coffman, a retired professor of English, Creative Writing, and Journalism. I am a poet and author of Speculative Literature. My works have been published in various literary magazines, journals, anthologies, and collections.
My poetry collections include a chapbook and four large volumes. I have a collection of occult detective short stories and will be publishing a collection of my weird, horrific, and supernatural tales in early 2024.
I have also written academic articles on literature and literary criticism, which have been published in peer-reviewed journals.
I am keenly interested in the rise and relevance of Popular Imaginative Literature across the several genres of the high imagination: Adventure, Detection & Mystery, Fantasy, Horror & the Supernatural, and Science Fiction.
On this website, you will find a GALLERY of my poetic, fictional, and scholarly work; some FEATURED material; a BLOG devoted to various of my interests; LINKS to my details about mypublished work—both freely available online or for sale; and relevant ANNOUNCEMENTS and NEWS.
"Coffman is a master prosodist, one of the better living dark poets around, and his current, tome-like collection of dark verse, The Coven's Hornbook, is a must-have for folks that like poetry in the vein of Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E Howard, George Sterling, and the old Weird Tales circle. His Khayyam's Rubaiyat is aesthetically satisfying on its own, but if you're into Sufism, Near Eastern mysticism, and the like, it's a great volume to pick up, too."
—Oliver Sheppard poet of Thirteen Nocturnes
Praise & Reviews
“Versitile manipulation of the Onegin Sonnet by Withrow and Coffman….This intriguing narrative in time and space will bear much reading and pondering. Brilliant and flexible versification with shifting perspectives….This is ingenious speculative fiction.”
— Master Bard of the Speculative, Donald Sidney-Fryer on my collaborative poem, “Toward Solstice Station”—done with "Partner in Rhyme," Steven Withrow
See also the earlier collections of Speculative Verse:
* The Coven's Hornbook & Other Poems
* Black Flames & Gleaming Shadows
* Eclipse of the Moon
AND
my early chapbook:
* This Ae Nighte, Every Nighte and Alle
"Poets who write capably in rhyme and meter are as rare as hen’s teeth. But the sonnets of one who has mastered the mechanics of meter will ring like a well-tuned musical instrument. You will find
such sonnets here, as well as more exotic verse-beasts: the shadorma, the pentina, the rondeau and (the author’s own invention) the trisengraf. To paraphrase Augustus Caesar: a
radish may know no poetry, but Frank Coffman does. The addition of this volume to one’s library is sure to enhance one’s appreciation for the lyric arts."
—Adam Bolivar, author of The Lay of Old Hex and Wheel of Ravens
