| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.169.221.108 |
I thought we needed a poetry thread. I, for one, am determined to get back into poetry, having just real-time reviewed Joel Lane's new poetry book THE AUTUMN MYTH. http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/the-autumn-myth-by-joel-lane/ I have many favourites, but my favourite Horror poem is DARKNESS by Lord Byron. http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/Darkness.htm Coincidentally, talking about Horror poetry, http://poetry.todd-fischer.com/2010/12/my-muse.html I am pleased with this muse name-check in this 1997 poem Todd Fischer posted yesterday, but I can't imagine anything I wrote inspired *everything* in this poem! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
I'm very fond of Tennyson's Rizpah. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.146.186 |
My weird poetry favourites include Edwin Morgan's 'Grendel', W.H. Auden's 'As I walked out one morning', Sylvia Plath's 'The Moon and the Yew Tree' and Walter de la Mare's 'The Listeners'. The latter is not just an effective ghost story but a bitter comment on its time. Another favourite is Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes' in the translation by Stephen Mitchell. Rilke's poetry – richly infused with myth, imagination and dark passion – shows up the likes of Clark Ashton Smith for the wooden, derivative, mannered tosh that it is. Every time another purveyor of leaden, inauthentic, form-obsessed, ninth-hand 'cosmic' sonnets is acclaimed in the weird fiction field as a 'true poet' superior to all things 'modern', I despair once again of the cultural isolation and literary backwardness of weird fiction fandom. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.146.186 |
Strangely, I like CAS as a prose writer. But his poetry has me thinking "What are you trying to prove?" I can't find depth, resonance or even a point in lines like 'We have seen the bosoms / Of the succubi.' | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.146.186 |
Des, Byron's 'Darkness' is magnificent. | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.172.153 |
I know little about poetry except I loved the two books of Joels, and I've asked Soozy to get me 'The Autumn Myth' for Crimbo. gcw | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
For weird and unsettling poetry, many of Dickinson's can't be beat. I read "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché as a compact and pretty good contemporary/non-supernatural horror story.... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.21 |
Yes, "Darkness" is the first poem which comes to mind. Strangely reminiscent of Hodgson's The Night Land - or is it the other way around? Joel, I see what you mean, but I find Smith's "The Hashish Eater" quite exceptional. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.209.217 |
Wilfred Owen's Strange Meeting, Charles Hamilton Sorley's when you see millions of the mouthless dead ... In fact, most First World War poetry, but those in particular have genuine supernatural themes. Tennyson's The Lady Of Shallot. Browning's My Last Duchess. R.S. Thomas' The Other. And I'm sure there's one major example I've utterly forgotten... something by Donne, maybe? In terms of specifically 'horror' poetry, I do love Jack Prelutsky's verse. I still have and treasure my copy of The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight and if I ever have children, will read it to them... Stevie will be along in a moment to provide several top 10 lists....  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.179.136 |
Hubert, yes, 'The Hashish Eater' is good. I was getting carried away rather (to the long white car). | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 120.126.96.2 |
>>>I can't find depth, resonance or even a point in lines like 'We have seen the bosoms / Of the succubi.' I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that any poetic couplet about boobies is fine by me. Zed, help me out here! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.232.7 |
Bless. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Also Yeats' "The Second Coming" has about it the flavor of apocalyptic horror. And then Stevie Smith's "Not Waving But Drowning" which reads, one way, like a teeny-tiny EC horror story.... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.130.87 |
Another weird classic is Robert Browning's 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came': a starkly described journey through the underworld. |