Dark and sinister poetry?

[hampusforev]

Hey people,
Now I'm by no means a poetry-connoisseur, I would like to think I am, but obviously I can't be. I'm also lazy, which explains why I can't seek for dark and sinister poetry myself. Also I like posing questions to you guys, because you seem to be able to posit an incredible amount of needed information.

Anyhoo, I'm looking for poetry with a somber, bizarre and disturbing tone. I know Baudelaire has some pretty scary ones, and obviously Poe (but I don't care for him as a poet), Blake also has some. I prefer it if the poets aren't too canonical, but if you think there's any that you just can't refrain from bringing up; it's quite probable I have overlooked it.

Cheers!

[Saladin]

Check out "The Raven" and "Ulalume" by Poe.

[Dark Muse]

Some of the work of Browning is quite sinsiter and dark.

I would recomned:

Prophyria's Lover
My Last Dutchess
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
The Labratory


Those are the ones that stick out in my mind the most

[Silas Thorne]

Byron's 'Darkness'
Keats' 'La belle dame sans merci' (I think that's it)
Aeschylus' 'Oresteia' (3 plays-Look for the speeches of the Furies)
I'm sure there are lots of others, I just can't can't think of any right now.

[JBI]

The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

[stlukesguild]

Christabel- Coleridge

[stlukesguild]

Heinrich Heine has quite a few:

A Woman from Ballads as well as a good many from a collection entitled Thanatos.

Goethe's Erlkönig

For "sinister" and dark in another manner check into Bertolt Brecht's poems... especially the Manual of Piety.

There is also Rimbaud's Season in Hell and Drunken Boat.

Also check out The Unquiet Grave, and Old English Ballad:

http://www.penddraig.co.uk/pen/grave.htm

[hampusforev]

Wow, thank you. I'll be checking those out! Saladin, I'm not too keen on Poe's poetry, the themes are good but... I don't know, there's just something about Poe, he's not a very cogent poet.

Anyway, what I mean by sinister is poems about murder, incest, rape, the devil or other frowned upon topics in our politically correct discourse.

[Pecksie]

'The Fairies' by William Allingham...

The quintessential rape poem is perhaps Shakespeare's 'The Rape of Lucrece', though it deals with other issues (politics, honour, etc.) as much as with the rape itself.

Check also Adrienne Rich's incredibly powerful poem, "Frame".

[kandaurov]

Swinburne's "The Leper" seems to be exactly your cup o' tea.

Apart from those already mentioned, here's all I can come up with for the moment:

Rape: Yeats's "Leda and the Swan"

Scatological: Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room"

Suicide: Álvaro de Campos's untitled poem (first line "If you want to kill yourself, why don't you want to kill yourself?")

Destruction: Frost's "Fire and Ice"

Frankly insulting language: Rochester's "Satyr on Charles II"

Somewhat depressing:
Yeats's "When you are old"
Keats's "When I have fears that I may cease to be"

You should also have a look at war poetry, Owens, Rosenberg, and the like. I think you'd like Owens's "Exposure".

[mono]

Anything by Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, or Charles Bukowski (for just seeming twisted in his own way :p).

One specific:
"Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning

[hampusforev]

Haha wow, scatology eh? Can't see how one goes about writing a good poem on that subject, but it sure is controversial. Thanks everybody, I'm loving this. Just found a copy of Rimbauds collected works somewhere in my poetry collection and I loved "A Season in Hell". Not sure what it's about yet, seems rather incoherent and esoteric but it has a sinister beauty to it. I've dug out Frost's "Fire and Ice", and the Yeats suggestions. I'll try to find my Poetry collections with Browning in 'em, I know I have some.

Again, thanks! And keep them coming!

[kandaurov]

Well I can make it easier for you, if you like; here are the poems I've mentioned

Leper: http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20274&c=304
Dressing Room: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/dressing.html
Suicide: http://milkfromthedish.blogspot.com/2007/06/untitled-poem-by-fernando-pessoa-as.html
Satyr: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/charles2.html
When I have fears: http://www.bartleby.com/101/635.html
Exposure: http://europeanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/blowenexposure.htm

Enjoy (?) ;)

[Wilde woman]

Stlukesguild - good call on "Erlkonig".

I recommend "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg (And not just because he's a fellow Berkeleyean). It's a really sobering look at American society in the '70s.

Be warned, it's rather long: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15308

[hampusforev]

Oh yeah I've read Ginsbergs Howl, it's quite good. But I feel it loses something in it's momentum, oh well..

Thank you Kandaurov, I'll get to reading those right away

[prendrelemick]

My last Dutchess, by Robert Browning is well worth a look