The occult, the miraculous and the paranormal

[annie]

Dear Poets on Fire

I am looking for poems (of any era) which deal in some way with the occult, the miraculous or the paranormal. I would be grateful for any suggestions.

[Matthew Francis]

Off the top of my head:

The Ancient Mariner

Tam o' Shanter

The Raven

Two poems by Robert Frost, 'The Pauper Witch of Grafton' and The Witch of Coos' (both favourites of mine. I love the bit in 'The Witch of Coos' about the skeleton which 'carried itself like a pile of dishes' up the stairs.)

Robert Graves, 'Welsh Incident'

John Donne, 'The Apparition'

Edwin Morgan, 'The Mummy'

[mgranier]

I love that genre. I made a similar request a couple of years ago on this forum, for a course I was setting up for the Adult Ed Dept. in UCD, provisionally called 'Ghost Train'. While looking for material, I found (or someone might have sent me) this short one by Stephen Crane:

There Is A Grey Thing…

There is a grey thing that lives in the tree-tops
None knows the horror of its sight
Save those who meet death in the wilderness
But one is enabled to see
To see branches move at its passing
To hear at times the wail of black laughter
And to come often upon mystic places
Places where the thing has just been.

The shortest poem I have ever written is a 'ghost poem'. I posted it on my Lightbox blog recently, with a photo/illustration: Ghost Story

[Chris Hamilton-Emery]

I don't normally blow my own trumpet, but my first collection Dr Mephisto is littered with the occult.

[John McCullough]

To add to the ones mentioned above, below is a link to a website which has 66 poems on ghosts and the occult by famous poets including James Merrill (whose ouija board poems in The Book of Ephraim are generally well regarded), Louise Gluck, Weldon Kees and traditional favourites like Walter de la Mare's 'The Listeners'...

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/to....8.1.html?id=65

In terms of other contemporary poets, Helen Mort recently published a pamphlet with Tall Lighthouse called A Pint for the Ghost and I did one with them called The Lives of Ghosts as part of the pilot series last year. Both of these, as the titles suggest, contain much inspired by the paranormal.

August Kleinzahler has a fair few poems on such subjects. 'Where Souls Go' is one of his best-known pieces and there's also the fabulous 'Green River Cemetery: Springs' (in Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow plus his new Selected) and 'Ghosts' (in Live at the Hong Kong Nile Club).

Thom Gunn has a dark poem envisaging the afterlife called 'Death's Door' in The Man with Night Sweats. 'Fog' by Mark Doty in My Alexandria also looks at the spirit world and there's a great poem by Ken Smith called 'After Mr Mayhew's Visit' in his Bloodaxe Selected. 'Bedfellows' in Don Paterson's first collection Nil Nil is also worth a look.

Hope this is useful.

[John McCullough]

More poems...

'The New Bride' by Catherine Smith is narrated by a ghost. It's in her first collection The Butcher's Hands. Michael Symmons Roberts' sequence 'Food for Risen Bodies' in Corpus is very good.

Allen Ginsberg's 'A Supermarket in California' is probably my single favourite poem in this area (even though in general I'm not a massive Ginsberg fan). And Yeats has plenty. I particularly like 'The Valley of the Black Pig'.

[mgranier]

And of course there's Katy's lovely and eerie 'Your Ghosts', from Me And The Dead.

[annie]

Fabulous. Warmest thanks to Mgranier, Matthew, Chris and Matthew

Annie xxxxxxxxx

[annie]

John. Thank you so much

Annie

[Tony Williams]

There's also Emily Dickinson's ‘Because I could not stop for Death’, written in the voice of a centuries-old corpse.

[Anne B]

And on the subject of miracles, David Constantine's pair of Lazarus poems ("Christ to Lazarus" and "Lazarus to Christ") are worth a look.

Mostly though, don't poets concern themselves with the ordinary made miraculous, rather than miracles? Elizabeth Bishop's A Miracle for Breakfast, frex.

Maybe worth a quick look here: miracle poems

[Amy Key]

Hi Annie

I adore 'poem to line my casket with' by Joshua Bell. Can send it to you if you'd like.

Amy xx

[Chris Hamilton-Emery]

Oh, and I must mention Ghost & Other Sonnets by Geraldine Monk.

And The Grimoire of Grimalkin by Sascha Aurora Akhtar.

[KEB]

Thanks Mark!

Annie, one poem I'd always want to include in this category is Keats' This Living Hand, which although about the hand that's writing the poem, both prefigures and conjures away the ravages of death through what looks like a pre-emptive pact... astonishing every time.

Keats again, La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

Edna St Vincent Millay has a poem called The Little Ghost which gives me a genuine chill.

Then there's dear old Jimmy Merrill, as John says; The Changing Light at Sandover, huge, but with quotable sections.

Michael's Haunts.

Ciaran Carson, there are things in the Twelfth of Never, his wonderful collection... leprechauns and things. It's a marvellous book.

Then there's the old chestnuts: "one fine day in the middle of the night/ two dead boys got up to fight"; "As I was going up the stair/ I met a man who wasn't there," etc.

...

[Michelle McGrane]

Hi Annie,

How about Ian Duhig's The Lammas Hireling?

[KEB]

YES, THAT'S the one I was going to add! Marvellous poem. All kinds of weird.

[Steven Waling]

I was going to mention the Geraldine Monk - and also of course there's her Interegnum - about the Lancashire Witches.

[Michelle McGrane]

Angela France's Occupation (Ragged Raven Press, 2009) contains a number of magical poems: 'Ronan', 'Sea Hare', 'Rejecting Gravity', 'Preparations for a working day', A Hare is a kind of Witch', 'View from the crossroads', 'Mothering the Unmade', 'The Real Bedtime Story' - and more.

[mgranier]

Matthew Sweeney has a nicely savage little poem called, I think, 'How Witches Went Invisible'.

[Michelle McGrane]

Here's a link to some of Aleister Crowley's poems (!).

Also Erica Jong's, Witches.