Gothic Poetry and William Blake

[jprevprev]

I've always been drawn to darkness within literature so I was wondering if anyone could recommend any famous Gothic poets or poems? Additionally, I'm ashamed to say I haven't really read any Blake before and excluding Songs of Innocence and Experience (as its too pastoral), could anyone suggest a poem by him that captures this darkness that I am so interested in?

[Lokasenna]

I'm not sure I'd describe Experience as pastoral... but you could give Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell a go.

The obvious poet who springs to mind is Poe, with obvious poems being The Raven, Annabel Lee and El Dorado - amongst many others.

[mortalterror]

1555 Pierre de Ronsard- Hymn to Demons
1633 John Donne- The Apparition
1743 Robert Blair- The Grave
1790 Robert Burns- Tam O'Shanter
1798 Samuel Taylor Coleridge- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
1801 Robert Southey- Thalaba the Destroyer
1808 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe- Faust
1810 Percy Bysshe Shelley- The Spectral Horseman
1842 Mikhael Lermontov- The Demon
1846 Edgar Allan Poe- The Raven, Annabel Lee, The Bells
1855 Robert Browning- Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Porphyria's Lover
1857 Charles Baudelaire- Skeletons Digging
1862 Christina Rossetti- Goblin Market
1869 Lewis Carroll- Phantasmagoria
1896 A.E. Housman- The True Lover

[MorpheusSandman]

I think mortalterror covered most all of the recs I was going to make on the gothic front, except for Byron's Manfred and Cain. It's not exactly gothic, but you might be interested in James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover, which is a modern epic that revolves around Quija board sessions.

As for Blake, I wouldn't discount his Songs as being "too pastoral," as the pastoral touches in Innocence tend to have much darker counterparts in Experience. I don't know if Blake was ever really "dark," per say; his works provoke a sense of visionary awe more so than the darkness. Perhaps his Continental Prophecies (America, Europe, & The Song of Los) are his darkest, but I'd probably recommend either Milton: A Poem or The Four Zoas over them.