John Ries was one of the Decadent Aesthetes, a not-so decadent group of writers and musicians that first centred on the town of Warminster. After Ries's death, Steve Dewey and S Carr Gogh, friends and fellow Aesthetes, sorted through the poems and short stories that Ries had left behind. Ries was a perfectionist, and could never stop editing. His executor and friends took it upon themselves to finish the job.

Ries has a voice and a vision that is uniquely his own. These stories and poems reflect that. Odd and elliptical, full of symbolism and ritual, referring obliquely to the I Ching,...