Monster Verse: Poems Human and Inhuman

By Tony Barnstone

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375712402
• ISBN13: 9780375712401
• Release Date: September 2015
• Publisher: Everyman's Library
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.3" x 6.7"