{"product_id":"killer-verse-isbn-9780307700933","title":"Killer Verse","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eKiller Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem \u003c\/i\u003eis a spine-tingling collection of terrifically creepy poems about the deadly art of murder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe villains and victims who populate these pages range from Cain and Abel and Bluebeard and his wives to Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper, and Mafia hit men. The literary forms they inhabit are just as varied, from the colorful melodramas of old Scottish ballads to the hard-boiled poetry of twentieth-century noir, from lighthearted comic riffs to profound poetic musings on murder. Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, W. H. Auden, Stevie Smith, Mark Doty, Frank Bidart, Toi Derricotte, Lynn Emanuel, and Cornelius Eady are only a few of the many poets, old and new, whose work is captured in this heart-stopping—and criminally entertaining—collection.\u003c\/p\u003eForeword \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eALL IN THE FAMILY \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSimon Armitage “Gooseberry Season”\u003cbr\u003eGregory Djanikian “Abel” \u003cbr\u003eRigoberto Gonzalez “Your Darling Matricide” \u003cbr\u003eMargherita Guidacci “Cain and Abel (I)” \u003cbr\u003eKaci Hamilton “Mother” \u003cbr\u003eThomas Hardy “Her Second Husband Hears Her Story”\u003cbr\u003eJan Heller Levi “Fall River Historical Museum”\u003cbr\u003eJohn Masefield \u003ci\u003efrom\u003c\/i\u003e “Lollingdon Downs”  \u003cbr\u003eRoger Mcgough “Fart”  \u003cbr\u003eDonna Reis Sempronia \u003cbr\u003eVernon Scannell “A Case of Murder” \u003cbr\u003eRuth Sharman “Knife” \u003cbr\u003eRuth Whitman “The Passion of Lizzie Borden”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMURDER BALLADS \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous “The Cruel Brother”\u003cbr\u003eAnonymous “The Cruel Miller” \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous “The Cruel Mother” \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous “The Twa Sisters” \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous “Frankie and Albert” \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous “Pearl Bryan”  \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous “Stackalee”  \u003cbr\u003eCharles Causley “The Ballad of Charlotte Dymond” \u003cbr\u003eMegan Levad “American Murderer” \u003cbr\u003eEstha Weiner “The Talk of the County”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eVERS NOIR\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTony Barnstone “The Chop Shop” \u003cbr\u003eTony Barnstone “The Lover” \u003cbr\u003eLynn Emanuel “The Murder Writer” \u003cbr\u003eRichard Garcia “Naked City” \u003cbr\u003eAndrey Gritsman “Found Poem Found No Answers”\u003cbr\u003eRandall Horton “In Front of 1425 T Street”\u003cbr\u003eSuzanne Lummis “Double Indemnity\/The Second Shot”\u003cbr\u003eLawrence Raab “The Assassin’s Fatal Error”\u003cbr\u003eThom Ward “Actually, However”\u003cbr\u003ePhillip B. Williams Tequila”\u003cbr\u003eBaron Wormser “Chinatown”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTHE MIND OF THE MURDERER \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eRyan Black “When the World’s on Fire”\u003cbr\u003eRobert Browning “The Laboratory”\u003cbr\u003eChristopher Davis “The Murderer”\u003cbr\u003eCornelius Eady “Birthing”\u003cbr\u003eThomas Hood “The Dream of Eugene Aram”\u003cbr\u003eMary E. Moore “You Know Who You Are”\u003cbr\u003eKenneth Patchen “The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon-Colored Gloves”\u003cbr\u003eStevie Smith “The Murderer”\u003cbr\u003eDavid Starkey “The Murder Suspect, Moments Before He Is Confronted by Police”\u003cbr\u003eJ. J. Steinfeld “The Assassin’s Morning”\u003cbr\u003eGail White “Black Widow”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003ePSYCHO KILLERS\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAi “The Good Shepherd: Atlanta 1981”\u003cbr\u003eW. H. Auden “Victor”\u003cbr\u003eMelissa Balmain “Facebook Psycho”\u003cbr\u003eFrank Bidart “Herbert White”\u003cbr\u003eRobert Browning “Porphyria’s Lover”\u003cbr\u003eCarol Ann Duffy “Psychopath”\u003cbr\u003eThom Gunn “Hitch-Hiker”\u003cbr\u003eKimiko Hahn “All Told”\u003cbr\u003eKimiko Hahn “Road Kill” \u003cbr\u003eFrancine J. Harris “In Rostov, the Butcher”\u003cbr\u003eSusan Kelly “Whitechapel Nights” \u003cbr\u003eVirginia Slachman “Kabuki”\u003cbr\u003ePatricia Smith “Speculation”\u003cbr\u003eKevin Vaughn “April 25, 2009”\u003cbr\u003eJohn Whitworth “Blood Ties”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eVICTIMS \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWilliam Cullen Bryant “The Murdered Traveller” \u003cbr\u003eHayan Charara “On the Murder of an Ice Cream Man”\u003cbr\u003eMartha Collins \u003ci\u003efrom\u003c\/i\u003e “Blue Front”\u003cbr\u003ePhilip Dacey “With or Without Milk”\u003cbr\u003eW. H. Davies “The Inquest”\u003cbr\u003eToi Derricotte “On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses”\u003cbr\u003eMark Doty “Charlie Howard’s Descent”\u003cbr\u003eMelissa Fadul “Lord of Crows”\u003cbr\u003eLeon Gellert “Blue-beard’s First Wife”\u003cbr\u003eRichard Jones “Desire”\u003cbr\u003eEdgar Lee Masters “Amanda Barker”\u003cbr\u003eElise Paschen “Wi’-gi-e”\u003cbr\u003eMaria Terrone “The Slain Wife of the Lighthouse Keeper Speaks”\u003cbr\u003eCaitlin Elizabeth Thomson “Denise Naslund”\u003cbr\u003eCaitlin Elizabeth Thomson, “Eleanor Rose Naslund”\u003cbr\u003eCharles Harper Webb “The Sound that Wakes Me at Night, Thinking of It”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMEDITATIONS ON MURDER \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMiles A. Coon “Studying”\u003cbr\u003eWyn Cooper “Conversation Piece”\u003cbr\u003eMarie Howe “After the Movie”\u003cbr\u003eWeldon Kees “Crime Club”\u003cbr\u003eRavi Shankar “Killers in Letters”\u003cbr\u003eMichael Waters “Morpho”\u003cbr\u003eJohn Whitworth “These Boys”\u003cbr\u003eJohn Whitworth “The Pure Essence”\u003cbr\u003eJames Wright “At the Executed Murderer’s Grave”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIndex of Authors \u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments \u003cbr\u003eHarold Schechter is a professor of American literature and culture at Queens College, CUNY, and the author of mystery novels featuring Edgar Allan Poe. He lives in New York City.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKurt Brown is the author of four books of poetry and the editor of numerous anthologies. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.FOREWORD\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmong the countless dazzling artifacts displayed at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art are a trove of lethal weapons, ranging from ornately carved aboriginal war clubs to medieval crossbows decorated with engraved ivory panels to French flintlock rifles adorned with silver filigree. What’s most striking about these objects is not their beauty per se but how sheerly gratuitous that beauty is. After all, clubs, crossbows, and firearms kill just as efficiently without ivory inlays or Rococo silverwork. That the makers of these death-dealing implements devoted so much energy to their ornamentation reflects something vital about our species: our need to transmute our most savage instincts into art.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat paradoxical impulse is perfectly epitomized by the murder poem. Taking as its subject the very worst aspects of human nature – our propensity for crime, cruelty, and bloodshed – it shapes that disruptive material into order, wholeness, and meaning. There is, in fact, a wide range of aesthetic and emotional satisfactions to be derived from the selections in this volume. Some tell gripping stories of violence and retribution. Others offer insight into the workings of the psychopathic mind. Still others elicit pity and terror by putting us in the place of the victims. And some — by encouraging us to identify with the killers themselves — offer the vicarious thrill of the forbidden, reminding us of Plato’s dictum that ‘‘the virtuous man is content to dream what the wicked man actually does.’’ For all their variety, however, they share a need to confront and make sense of experiences, from serial murder to familicide, that defy rational comprehension. In doing so they perform the essential function of all true poetry, famously defined by Robert Frost as ‘‘a clarification of life . . . a momentary stay against confusion.’’ \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHarold Schechter\u003cbr\u003eKurt Brown","brand":"Everyman's Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233297674469,"sku":"NP9780307700933","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307700933.jpg?v=1767730722","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/killer-verse-isbn-9780307700933","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}