Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem [Hardcover]

Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhemis a spine-tingling collection of terrifically creepy poems about the deadly art of murder.

The 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.

Foreword
 
ALL IN THE FAMILY
 
Simon Armitage “Gooseberry Season”
Gregory Djanikian “Abel”
Rigoberto Gonzalez “Your Darling Matricide”
Margherita Guidacci “Cain and Abel (I)”
Kaci Hamilton “Mother”
Thomas Hardy “Her Second Husband Hears Her Story”
Jan Heller Levi “Fall River Historical Museum”
John Masefieldfrom“Lollingdon Downs”  
Roger Mcgough “Fart”  
Donna Reis Sempronia
Vernon Scannell “A Case of Murder”
Ruth Sharman “Knife”
Ruth Whitman “The Passion of Lizzie Borden”
 
MURDER BALLADS
 
Anonymous “The Cruel Brother”
Anonymous “The Cruel Miller”
Anonymous “The Cruel Mother”
Anonymous “The Twa Sisters”
Anonymous “Frankie and Albert”
Anonymous “Pearl Bryan”  
Anonymous “Stackalee”  
Charles Causley “The Ballad of Charlotte Dymond”
Megan Levad “American Murderer”
Estha Weiner “The Tallc®