Thomas Wiloch, R.I.P.

The weird genre lost one of its more obscure, but nonetheless interesting figures a few days ago. Author, editor, and artist Thomas Wiloch suffered a fatal heart attack at his home. Wiloch's career as a writer hasn't reached the acclaim he deserved in life. However, it can also be easily said to have avoided the mundane, the drab, and the predictable. Like his literary colleague and friend, weird heavyweight Thomas Ligotti, Wiloch routinely tested the boundaries of our reality in his writing.

He was primarily a poet. This is an aesthetic form often misused, abused, ignored, and otherwise twisted into failure. Not so with Thomas Wiloch's craft. His haunting poetry communicates unusual clarity--often with twinges of the supernatural, enclosed and very personal disasters, and deep meaning wrapped in deceptively simple stories. His last poetry collection, Screaming in Code, contains many fine pieces that provide the reader with a mature flavor of the author's work in his tragically shortened career. Several samples of these can be viewed on his website here.

I'm certain I'm not the only one hoping Thomas Wiloch's spirit enjoys a taste of the Lovecraft treatment. That is, posthumous success, despite great obscurity. Fortunately, his fiction was almost exclusively published by small press outlets. His short, but rich and ethereal booklets of poems and haikus can be found in the stores of many publishers for exceedingly affordable prices. If interest rises in the man's life work, however, this won't long remain the case with these first editions. Wiloch's friend and literary co-conspirator, Thomas Ligotti, has written a heartfelt and informative tribute to the poet here.

R.I.P.

-Grim Blogger