Yesterday and today I am doing a mini series within a series by featuring Horror poets and their Why I Love Horror essays. Before we get to that though, I want to remind everyone that poetry, in general, is steadily gaining readers, and dark poetry, specifically, is very popular with poetry readers. If you are looking to add dark petri to your libraries, please look at the last few years of Bram Stoker Nominees in the Poetry category here.
Now back to today's guest-- Maxwell I Gold:
Maxwell I. Gold is a multiple award nominated author who writes prose poetry and short stories in weird and cosmic fiction. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. Maxwell’s books include the Bram Stoker Award nominated poetry collection Bleeding Rainbows and Other Broken Spectrums. He lives in Ohio with his husband and two dogs Marshall and Otto, and currently serves as the Executive Director for the Horror Writers Association
Maxwell's poetry is focused on the weird and cosmic subgenres. I reviewed his poetry book, Tiny Oblivions and Mutual Self Destructions in Booklist here. I am most excited about his upcoming poetry book with Bad Hand Books-- one of the best small horror presses in the business, and now with distribution meaning you can find their titles on Edelweiss and order them through Ingram. It is entitled I Was a Teenage Anti-Fascist: A Yiddishkeit Poetry Rock Album and it is Bad Hand Books' first poetry book!
Like Pedro yesterday, Maxwell's is a name in dark poetry you need to know. For his essay, Maxwell took a different path, one that I think will help all of you understand the lure of dark poetry better. In the essay below, Maxwell talks about why he loves both poetry and horror.
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The Things That Quoth Poe in the Night
By: Maxwell I. Gold
Dark poetry has had a relatively short lifespan compared to its other literary genre-siblings: novels, short stories, and other forms of prose. Still, what we have come to know and love as dark poetry traces its roots beyond the gothic into and the esoteric which can easily, without dispute, older than Poe.
My love for poetry began well before I found myself within the throws of horror and dark literature. From the grotesque fantastique of William Blake to the wild universes painted within Ovid’s Metamorphosis and even deeper within Dante’s nine circles of Hell, there was always so much to admire, to fear, and to stand in awe from words that remained both timeless and awesome in a Kantian respect.
And yet, as my journey continued and I gained a deeper understanding and experience of dark poetry. I found something that pulled me toward dark poetry’s ability to draw out the darkest parts of ourselves with beauty, grace, and raw emotion. To explain, and to illustrate feelings that might otherwise become utterly infinitesimal in any other medium; poetry taps into the most primal and creative parts of our brains to showcase not only the darkness, but the possibility of light. Poetry itself thrives on devotion and passion, and Poe’s The Raven too, was a poem that embodied a sense of undying devotion, yearning, and desperate understanding. “Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, / Three fifths of him genius, two fifths sheer fudge,” the famous taunt and refrain used in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven illustrates a mere glimpse of both wit and darkness within horror poetry I’d come to appreciate.
I quote Ginsberg often and while he doesn’t necessarily fall into the realm of dark poetry in the traditional sense; his understanding of poetics and sense of otherness have become very important to me when I’m writing and reading poetry in and outside of the horror genre. Ginsberg once said, “concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don’t care who’s listening.”
Poetry speaks when words might also feel or seem impossible and that is also why I love both poetry and horror. It is the culmination of both freedom free from anxiety and a glimpse into our secret-self like tiny windows where monsters lurk. And in the immortal words of Poe’s Raven, “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted—nevermore!”
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