Monster Verse Poems Human and Inhuman

by Barnstone, Tony; Mitchell-foust, Michelle

• ISBN13: 9780375712401
• ISBN10: 0375712402
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-09-15
• Publisher: Everyman's Library

Summary

Monster Verse: Poems Human and Inhuman brings to life a colorful menagerie of fantastical creatures from across the ages.

Humans have always defined themselves by imagining the inhuman; the gloriously gruesome monsters that enliven our literary legacy haunt us by reflecting our own darkest possibilities. The poems gathered here range in focus from extreme examples of human monstrousness—murderers, cannibals, despotic Byzantine empresses—to the creatures of myth and nightmare: dragons, sea serpents, mermaids, gorgons, sirens, witches, and all sorts of winged, fanged, and fire-breathing grotesques. The ghastly parade includes Beowulf’s Grendel, Homer’s Circe, William Morris’s Fafnir, Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwock, Robert Lowell’s man-eating mermaid, Oriana Ivy’s Baba Yaga, Thom Gunn’s take on Jeffrey Dahmer, and Shakespeare’s hybrid creature Caliban, of whom Prospero famously concedes, “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.”

Monster Verse is both a delightful carnival of literary horror and an entertainingly provocative investigation of what it means to be human.

Author Biography

TONY BARNSTONE is the Albert Upton Professor of English Language and Literature at Whittier College, California. Author of numerous books of poetry, includingTongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki, winner of the John Ciardi Prize in Poetry, he is also a distinguished translator of Chinese poetry and literary prose, and editor of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poet anthology Chinese Erotic Poems.

MICHELLE MITCHELL-FOUST is the author of two poetry books and winner of numerous awards including a Nation "Discovery" Award, the Columbia University Poetry Prize, the Missouri Arts Council Biennial Award, and an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The Washington Post, Antioch Review, and The Colorado Review. She lives in Gold Beach, Oregon.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Distorting Mirrors, Split Selves, and the Origin of Monsters

ALIENS AND HUMAN MONSTERS

NEIL GAIMAN The Day the Saucers Came
STEPHEN KING The Dark Man
CALEY O’DWYER My Parents Were Monsters
ELIZABETH BISHOP The Man-Moth
NIN ANDREWS The Invisible Girl
RICK BURSKY The Man with a Hole in His Head
TONY BARNSTONE Nightmare Kiss
WILLIAM BAER Monster
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Strange Bedfellows: Caliban and Trinculo (From The Tempest)
DENNIS COOPER Ugly Man
ANTHONY MADRID The Milk One
ALICE NOTLEY From The Descent of Alette
AUGUST KLEINZAHLER Monsters
CHRIS DAVIDSON My Son Throws Sticks in the River
PATRICIA SMITH Bride
EDWARD FIELD The Bride of Frankenstein
JEANNE MARIE BEAUMONT Bride
SUZANNE LUMMIS To His Shy Mistress (Broken Rules Series)
GRANT HIER The Surgeon Turns the Scalpel on Himself
MEAGHAN REYNOLDS Lilith to Eve
SAMANTHA WOEHL Eve on Exodus
MICHAEL HULSE The Secret History
THOM GUNN Hitch-Hiker
JOHN FITZGERALD Tacoma
BRYAN DIETRICH Lizzie Borden
ANON. From The Death of King Arthur
ROBERT BROWNING The Laboratory
CHARLES HARPER WEBB Manpanzee,
JAMES TATE The Cowboy
ALEX MORRIS Signs
JIM BARNES On Hearing the News That Hitler Was Dead
TOMASZ RO´ZYCKI Ants and Sharks

WITCHES, WIZARDS, MAGICIANS, AND FAERIE CREATURES

MADISON CAWEIN The Town Witch
PAMELA MCCLURE Witch Lament
LI HE A Piece for Magic Strings
ORIANA IVY Baba Yaga
REBECCA DUNHAM Encaged, as by God’s Good Rage
ROBERT FROST The Witch of Coos
PIERRE DE RONSARD Invective Against Denise, a Witch
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE The Weird Sisters (From Macbeth)
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON The White Witch
ANDREJS PUMPURS From Bearslayer
J. W. DEFOREST The Monsters Dance (From The Gentle Earl)
MIROSLAV HOLUB Zito the Magician
ANON. From The Sultan of Babylon
J. R. R. TOLKIEN Troll sat alone on his seat of stone
TOM SLEIGH From New York American Spell, 2001
OVID Macareus’s Tale of Circe’s Island (From Ovid’s Metamorphoses)
BAI JUYI The Man Who Dreamed of Fairies
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Erl-King
NUALA NI´ DHOMHNAIL The Fairy Hitch-Hiker
THOMAS CAMPION Thrice tosse these Oaken ashes in the ayre
A. E. STALLINGS Fairy-Tale Logic

BESTIARY

JEANNINE HALL GAILEY Here There Be Monsters
STANLEY MOSS The Man Tree
JORGE LUIS BORGES To the Mirror
TED HUGHES Wodwo
MICHELLE MITCHELL-FOUST Aries at Mulling Manor
MICHAEL LONGLEY Spiderwoman
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE To Each His Chimera
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON The Kraken
GWENDOLYN MACEWEN The Death of the Loch Ness Monster
HOMER The Sirens (From The Odyssey)
JUAN FELIPE HERRERA La Sirena
MARIANO ZARO Sireno / Merboy
BISHOP THEOBALDUS From The Bestiary: Sirens, The Honocentaur
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE From The Bestiary; or Orpheus’ Procession: The Serpent, Jellyfish, Sirens, The Octopus
ROBERT LOWELL From Mermaid
ANNIE FINCH The Last Mermother
ALLYSON SHAW Mermaid Surgery
STEPHEN TRASK Origin of Love
ANON. HAWAIIAN The Woman Who Married a Caterpillar
NED BALBO A Creature in Love
ROY MASH Creature from the Black Lagoon
EDMUND SPENSER The Quelling of the Blatant Beast (From The Faerie Queene)
OSCAR WILDE From The Sphinx
KRYSTAL VALLADARES Medusa
ROBERT OLEN BUTLER Medusa
LOUISE BOGAN Medusa
BISHOP PATRICK OF IRELAND Of Men Who Turn Themselves into Wolves
CARSEN WEST Brother, Sister
CHRISTOPHER MERRILL The Reunion
BONNIE JO STUFFLEBEAM The Werewolf
WILLIAM BLAKE The Tyger
LAWRENCE RAAB Attack of the Crab Monsters
EDGAR ALLAN POE The Conqueror Worm
TESS TAYLOR The Visitor
JENNIFER CLEMENT Scarecrow
ALLEN GINSBERG The Lion for Real
JOSHUA DAVIS The Patchwork Horses
CATHERINE TUFARIELLO Bête Noire
ERIC ORMSBY Antlion
WILLIAM MORRIS Regin Tells of Fafnir’s Transformation (From The Story of Sigurd the Volsung)
APOLLONIUS OF RHODES The Never-Sleeping Dragon, Guardian of the Golden Fleece (From Jason and the Argonauts)
ILYSE KUSNETZ The Birth of Godzilla
HOMER The Cyclops (From The Odyssey)
ISHMAEL REED The Black Cock
ANON. Beowulf Battles Grendel (From Beowulf)
LEWIS CARROLL Jabberwocky
THEODOR GEISEL (DR. SEUSS) Mr. Grinch

Acknowledgments