{"product_id":"poems-dead-and-undead-isbn-9780375712517","title":"Poems Dead and Undead","description":"In time for Halloween: a one-of-a-kind hardcover collection of poems from ancient times to the present about ghosts, zombies, and vampires. EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY POCKET POETS.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis selection of poems from across the ages brings to life a staggering array of zombies, ghosts, vampires, and devils. Our culture's current obsession with zombies and vampires is only the latest form of a fascination with crossing the boundary between the living and the dead that has haunted humans since we first began writing. The poetic evidence gathered here ranges from ancient Egyptian inscriptions and the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh to the Greek bard Homer, and from Shakespeare and Milton and Keats to Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. Here too are terrifying apparitions from a host of more recent poets, from T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath to Rita Dove and Billy Collins, from Allen Ginsberg and H. P. Lovecraft to Mick Jagger and Shel Silverstein. The result is a delightfully entertaining volume of spine-tingling poems for fans of horror and poetry both.Introduction: \u003ci\u003eOne Foot Out of the Grave \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTHE CORPOREAL UNDEAD \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHenry Israeli \u003cbr\u003eDepraved Cogitation \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eKim Addonizio \u003cbr\u003eNight Of The Living, Night Of The Dead \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eJohann Wolfgang von Goethe \u003cbr\u003eDer Totentanz (The Dance of the Dead) \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBryan Dietrich \u003cbr\u003eZombies \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eRobert E. Howard \u003cbr\u003eDead Man’s Hate \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWilliam Shakespeare \u003cbr\u003ePuck’s Nighttime Speech \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEugene Lee Hamilton \u003cbr\u003eOn Two Of Signorelli’s Frescoes \u003cbr\u003e1. The Rising of the Dead \u003cbr\u003e2. The Binding of the Lost \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMarvin Bell \u003cbr\u003eThe Book of the Dead Man (Medusa) \u003cbr\u003e1. About the Dead Man and Medusa \u003cbr\u003e2. More About the Dead Man and Medusa \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEdgar Allan Poe \u003cbr\u003eThe Sleeper \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCharles Baudelaire \u003cbr\u003eMetamorphoses of the Vampire \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTony Barnstone \u003cbr\u003eThe Revenant \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eGeorge Gordon, Lord Byron \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003efrom\u003c\/i\u003e The Giaour\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWilliam Baer \u003cbr\u003eAll Hallows Eve \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMichael Hulse \u003cbr\u003eThe Death of Dracula \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAlexandra Teague \u003cbr\u003eSarah Winchester, 23 Years Dead, Watches \u003ci\u003eHouse of Dracula\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTim Siebles \u003cbr\u003eBlade, The Daywalker\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTim Siebles \u003cbr\u003eBlade, Historical \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eConrad Aiken \u003cbr\u003eThe Vampire \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eJim Stewart \u003cbr\u003eCount Orlok \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTony Trigilio \u003cbr\u003eMy Childhood Nightmares Unfolded in Serial Narrative \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSarah Maclay \u003cbr\u003eThe View From Harold Way \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTHE INCORPOREAL UNDEAD \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eJorge Luis Borges \u003cbr\u003eDead Hoodlums \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSholeh Wolpe \u003cbr\u003eGhost Tango \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAlan Michael Parker \u003cbr\u003eWords for Spring \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMatthew Sweeney \u003cbr\u003eIn the Dust \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHayden Carruth \u003cbr\u003eThe Afterlife: Letter to Sam Hamill \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eLi-young Lee \u003cbr\u003eNocturne\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWilliam Wordsworth \u003cbr\u003eWe Are Seven \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eGary Young \u003cbr\u003eI last saw my mother\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEmily Dickinson \u003cbr\u003eOne need not be a Chamber to be Haunted\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCharles Harper Webb \u003cbr\u003eHaunted \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eRobert Frost \u003cbr\u003eGhost House \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDavid Orr \u003cbr\u003eDaniel \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eT. S. Eliot \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003efrom\u003c\/i\u003e Little Gidding\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDavid Daniel \u003cbr\u003ePaint \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThomas Hardy \u003cbr\u003eThe Shadow on the Stone\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMark Jarman \u003cbr\u003eGoodbye to a Poltergeist \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHoward Nemerov \u003cbr\u003eI Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWilliam Shakespeare \u003cbr\u003eThe Ghost of King Hamlet\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCiaran Carson \u003cbr\u003eLabuntur et Imputantur \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eJames Merrill \u003cbr\u003eVoices from the Other World \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCharles Simic \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003efrom\u003c\/i\u003e The Invisible\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAnne Sexton \u003cbr\u003eGhosts \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHarold Pinter \u003cbr\u003eGhost \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eRichard Garcia \u003cbr\u003eThe White Ghosts \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEdward Hirsch \u003cbr\u003eHotel Window \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eJohn Donne \u003cbr\u003eThe Apparition \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eRichard Hunt \u003cbr\u003eGas-lamp Ghost \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWalt Whitman \u003cbr\u003eAs If a Phantom Caress’d Me \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eD.H. Lawrence \u003cbr\u003eThe Inheritance\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous\u003cbr\u003eThe Unquiet Grave \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eJohn Milton \u003cbr\u003eSonnet 23: Methought I Saw my Late Espoused Saint \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDerek Dew \u003cbr\u003e(Weathervane) Pirate Ship of the Dead \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eYusef Komunyakaa \u003cbr\u003eBlue Dementia \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHenry Wordsworth Longfellow\u003cbr\u003eThe Ghosts (\u003ci\u003efrom \u003c\/i\u003eThe Song of Hiawatha)\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMolly Peacock \u003cbr\u003eGreat-Grandmother’s Young Ghost \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eJorge Teillier \u003cbr\u003eIn Order to Talk with the Dead \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWilliam Stobb \u003cbr\u003eThe Panther \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eGeorge Gordon, Lord Byron \u003cbr\u003eIncantation of the Spirits of Earth and Air \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eVachel Lindsay \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003efrom \u003c\/i\u003eThe Ghosts of the Buffaloes\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEgyptian Pyramid Text \u003cbr\u003eThe Dead King Eats the Gods \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDEVILS, GODS, ANGELS, DEATH \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAmin Esmaielpour \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFrom \u003c\/i\u003eZahhak’s Burning Tehran\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMichelle Mitchell-Foust \u003cbr\u003eFrom Hell, Mister Lusk \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDante Alighieri\u003cbr\u003eCanto XIII: The Wood of Suicides (\u003ci\u003efrom \u003c\/i\u003eThe Inferno)\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eArthur Rimbaud \u003cbr\u003eNight of Hell \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eJohn Milton \u003cbr\u003eSatan’s Speech to the Fallen Angels (\u003ci\u003efrom\u003c\/i\u003e Paradise Lost) \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eStephen Dobyns \u003cbr\u003eThe Gardener \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBoris Pasternak \u003cbr\u003eMephistopheles \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eH. P. Lovecraft \u003cbr\u003eNemesis \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAllen Ginsberg \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHowl\u003c\/i\u003e, Part II \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous\u003cbr\u003eThe Whale \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBishop Theobaldus \u003cbr\u003eThe Whale \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eRobert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003efrom\u003c\/i\u003e The Devil’s Walk \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eGeorge Meredith \u003cbr\u003eLucifer in Starlight \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eJohann Wolfgang von Goethe \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003efrom Faust \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eRita Dove \u003cbr\u003eHades’ Pitch\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eNuala ni Dhomhnaill \u003cbr\u003eDevil’s Tattoo \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDavid St. John \u003cbr\u003eIn the Pines \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAlexander Pushkin \u003cbr\u003eDemons \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eJennifer Clement \u003cbr\u003eDeus Ex Machina \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFrom \u003c\/i\u003eThe Oldest Legends of Ancestors\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFulke Greville, Lord Brooke\u003cbr\u003eSonnet 100\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWilliam Butler Yeats \u003cbr\u003eThe Second Coming \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous \u003cbr\u003eBeast from The Sea (\u003ci\u003efrom\u003c\/i\u003e The Book of Revelation) \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChristina Rossetti \u003cbr\u003eThe World \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCharles Baudelaire \u003cbr\u003eIncubus \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous \u003cbr\u003eEnkidu’s Dream of the Underworld (\u003ci\u003efrom The Epic of Gilgamesh\u003c\/i\u003e) \u003cbr\u003eversion by Tony Barnstone and Emma Varesio \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHomer  \u003cbr\u003eThe Land of the Dead (\u003ci\u003efrom The Odyssey\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eLynda Hull \u003cbr\u003eAddress (\u003ci\u003efrom\u003c\/i\u003e Suite for Emily) \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEmily Dickinson \u003cbr\u003eBecause I could not stop for Death\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWilliam Shakespeare \u003cbr\u003eFlute Playing the Death of Thisbe\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eRobert Louis Stevenson \u003cbr\u003eDeath to the Dead For Evermore \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSuzanne Roberts \u003cbr\u003eSkeleton \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eGrace Schulman \u003cbr\u003eInstructions for a Journey  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDana Curtis \u003cbr\u003eThe Angel Opened \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBilly Collins \u003cbr\u003eQuestions About Angels \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEdward Hirsch \u003cbr\u003eIsis Unveiled \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHelene Cardona \u003cbr\u003eTo Kitty, Who Loved The Sea And Somerset Maugham  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eC. K. Williams \u003cbr\u003eHalo\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAnonymous \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003efrom\u003c\/i\u003e Psalm 18 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWillis Barnstone \u003cbr\u003eGod of the Gas Chambers, Where Are You Hiding? \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eRobert Pinsky \u003cbr\u003eThe Refinery  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eShel Silverstein \u003cbr\u003eMonsters I’ve Met \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTONY BARNSTONE is the Albert Upton Professor of English Language and Literature at Whittier College. Author of numerous books of poetry, including \u003ci\u003eTongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki,\u003c\/i\u003e winner of the John Ciardi Prize in Poetry, and \u003ci\u003eThe Golem of Los Angeles,\u003c\/i\u003e which won the Benjamin Saltman Award 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMICHELLE MITCHELL-FOUST is the author of two poetry books and winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize, a Discovery\/The Nation Award, the Columbia University Poetry Prize, a Writers @ Work Fellowship, the Missouri Arts Council Biennial Award, two University of Missouri-Columbia Creative Writing Fellowships, and an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe Nation, The Washington Post, Antioch Review,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Colorado Review,\u003c\/i\u003e among others.\u003ci\u003eExcerpted from the Introduction\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eINTRODUCTION\u003cbr\u003eONE FOOT OUT OF THE GRAVE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne moment you are alive. A car accident, a piece of pork stuck in your throat, or the slow burning away of disease, and then the change comes. The blood recedes. The heart silences. The breath dies out. Something shakes out of the body with the death rattle of that last breath. This transformation is the great mystery and the source of all religion. What is it that leaves? The spirit? The words for the soul – Latin \u003ci\u003espiritus\u003c\/i\u003e and Greek pneuma – mean ‘‘breath,’’ and it seemed to the ancients that breath carried that mysterious pneumatic spirit that animates the body. But the moment of death isn’t the story’s end. Horribly, the dead body swells and farts and shifts, and the hair and nails grow after death. From such phenomena, the ancients must have asked, can the same breath that carries the spirit away carry something back into the corpse? Whether this something is infection or demon, this possession and dispossession is the great fear at the core of many monster tales. Can the dead become undead?\u003cbr\u003eCan they indeed come back like Orpheus and Odysseus and Lazarus? Sometimes the dead are said to come back in nightmares, remnants of nature that have been suppressed, and sometimes for revenge; other times when the dead return from their descent into the earth they are (like Persephone and Inanna and Jesus) figures of the famous resurrection stories in which the planted body is actually a seed that will sprout new life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eZombies\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eAt times, we call the resurrected \u003ci\u003ezombies\u003c\/i\u003e. They are the children of sin, the dead bursting from their caskets in the end times; or they are children of the laboratory, mothered by infections or suffering contamination in an age ofHIV\/AIDS and biological and chemical warfare. They come to us, things in the dark animated with unlife, and seem not to have souls, just an endless hunger to fill the emptiness inside with our tender flesh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFear often drives the creation of zombie tales, and of all monster tales, for that matter. What are monsters but \u003ci\u003ethe unknown made flesh\u003c\/i\u003e? They are the bad unknown, bad because the word ‘‘monster’’ comes from the Latin word for ‘‘warn’’ (\u003ci\u003emonere\u003c\/i\u003e). We see in the poems of this collection the evolution of unknowns, dark figures in the family of archetypes that merit warnings. Therein lies their moniker \u003ci\u003eMonster\u003c\/i\u003e. And yet, the literary creation of these monsters can be a coming to terms with or a safe rehearsal of fear, as horror author Stephen King has said. Monster creators facilitate the escape from the world’s crises and from ‘‘the cult ofconsciousness’’ into mythologies and ‘‘speculations of a fantasy world,’’ according to psychologist James Hillman.\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eIn recent depictions, zombies move faster and faster, maybe because we humans have become more and more driven in pursuit of the possible. Humans hunger more than ever – for information, for physical satisfaction, for fame. Zombies are hunger at a cellular level. Suppressed hunger. Cannibalistic hunger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet zombies are horrible enough moving slowly, with their failing body parts falling off around them. They move beyond death perhaps because (as in Bryan Dietrich’s ‘‘Zombies’’) ‘‘Hell \/ is full,’’ or as in Kim Addonizio’s poem ‘‘Night of the Living, Night of the Dead’’ because life itself is Hell they become zombies rising from their graves and stumbling up the hill toward the house. Thus, Addonizio winks at the reader and lets us know that these zombies are not so different from us: they are ‘‘like drunks headed home from the bar’’ and maybe all they want is to lie down in their drunkenness in some room while the world whirls around them, not to eat our brains after all. Maybe, in fact, the poem is really about human beings in such despair that they drink themselves into a state where they are mumbling, stumbling monsters, not unlike zombies?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn popular culture, the zombies represent different things in different generations: conformity and mind control in the Cold War era; or a disease metaphor in the era of AIDS. For Addonizio, they represent a relentless despair and self-hatred manifested in repeated self- destructive action.\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVampires\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eIn England, it was common well into the nineteenth century to tie the feet of the dead to keep them from walking. Like zombies, \u003ci\u003evampires\u003c\/i\u003e are the walking dead, post-humans powered by post-human desire that makes the recognizable human form \u003ci\u003esinister\u003c\/i\u003e, as in Conrad Aiken’s seductress vampire, with her ‘‘basilisk eyes’’ and ‘‘mouth so sweet, so poisonous,’’ or that of Baudelaire, whose beauty is so great that angels would be damned for her, but who transforms after ‘‘she had sucked the marrow from [his] bones’’ into ‘‘a kind of slimy wine- skin brimming with pus!’’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe can look at ourselves as monsters and see how deeply we desire those things that quench our human, physical needs. We want to live longer; we want to eat more, kiss more, and how manipulative we can be in pursuing what we desire! Vampires are the embodiment of excess, and they, too, arise from and fall prey to infection, contamination, excess, as we see in Michael Hulse’s playfully ironic song\/poem ‘‘The Death of Dracula’’: ‘‘The fiend who bled a thousand maids \/ has joined the dark Satanic shades.’’\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGhosts\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eBut what if we die and our bodies decay, unreanimated, and yet we do still not go away? Then we are yet another monster, a \u003ci\u003eghost\u003c\/i\u003e. Perhaps we are the residue of human ineffable sadness, wafting in the room like the scent of flowers long turned to dust.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGhosts are our largest pool of poems to consider, probably because ghosts are the monsters of reflection. They do not frighten us because they are exaggerations of ourselves the way that zombies and vampires are. They frighten us in apparition because they ask us to remember our own coming deaths and commit us to live, ‘‘Because, once looked at lit \/ By the cold reflections of the dead \/ . . . Our lives have never seemed more full, more real, \/ Nor the full moon more quick to chill’’ (James Merrill, ‘‘Voices from the Other World’’). And they remind us that they are out \u003ci\u003ethere\u003c\/i\u003e always reminding us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGhost settings, such as the Romantic graveyard of Wordsworth’s poem, ‘‘We Are Seven,’’ are as important in Gothic literature as the ghosts themselves. Tradi- tionally, particularly in America, houses and castles are haunted, as in Robert Frost’s chilling poem ‘‘Ghost House,’’ but when the \u003ci\u003ebrain\u003c\/i\u003e is haunted, the result is more unsettling. We can find this kind of haunting in Emily Dickinson’s ‘‘One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted,’’ wherein the haunted body ‘‘borrows a Revolver’’ and ‘‘bolts the Door.’’ And although neuropsychologist Oliver Sacks has recently described ‘‘the feeling of someone standing behind you’’ as a neuro- logical phenomenon, Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘‘The Shadow on the Stone’’ puts a ghost to that feeling.\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Everyman's Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303260803301,"sku":"NP9780375712517","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375712517.jpg?v=1767734908","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/poems-dead-and-undead-isbn-9780375712517","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}