So many of my favorite poems aim to unsettle or conjure or raise the dead. There are, of course, the truly classic Halloween go-to poems like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Robert Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” but here are some other favorite poems that might or might not make the Halloween-specific lists, but certainly evoke and invoke magic, necromancy, creatures, and fears. Add your own favorites in the comments… if you dare.
- Zombie surprise in a beautiful lyric poem: Robert Andrew Perez, “late summer“
by this logic, elegy is an elegy of an elegy.
and grief a failure
of necromancy.
zombie poem, be.
Real-life magic poem: “black herman’s last asrah levitation at magic city, Atlanta 2010,” LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs (based on magician Benjamin Rucker, aka “Black Herman”)
- Classic terror poem: “‘This living hand, now warm and capable,’” John Keats
- Poetry collection double-feature: The Man Suit (“The Monster Hour,” “Halloween,” “Full of Knives,” and Scary, No Scary (“The Black Hole,” “The Monster Hour,” “The Sawing in Half”) Zachary Schomburg
- Existential terror poems: Collected Poems (“Sleeping with One Eye Open,” “The Tunnel,” “The Ghost Ship,” “The Prediction”) Mark Strand
. . . Even the half-moon
(Half man,
Half dark), on the horizon,
Lies on
Its side casting a fishy light
Which alights
On my floor, lavishly lording
Its morbid
Look over me. Oh, I feel dead,
Folded
Away in my blankets for good, and
Forgotten.
My room is clammy and cold,
Moonhandled
And weird. The shivers
Wash over
Me, shaking my bones, my loose ends
Loosen,
And I lie sleeping with one eye open,
Hoping
That nothing, nothing will happen.
(from “Sleeping With One Eye Open”)
- Badass witch poem: “Her Kind,” Anne Sexton
- The scariest tree poem ever: “The Elm,” Sylvia Plath