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Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem
Edited by Harold Schechter and Kurt Brown
#UE6332
Hardcover, 255 pages; 2011
$13.50
 Members' Price: $11.48
Mrs. Murphy killed her mate.
The act was frowned on by the state.
She murmured, just before they threw
The switch, "It's just what spiders do.
--"Black Widow" by Gail White
Ranging from creepily comical to diabolically disturbing, the macabre poetry collected in Killer Verse explores murder from all kinds of perspectives. Why a collection about so vile a subject? The editors of this handsome Everyman's Library Pocket Poets edition contend that the murder poem, "taking as its subject the very worst aspects of human nature--our propensity for crime, cruelty, and bloodshed--…shapes that disruptive material into order, wholeness, and meaning." Riveting, spine-tingling, and often profound, these works by such poets as Robert Browning, W. H. Auden, Stevie Smith, Carol Ann Duffy, and Mark Doty are criminally addicting--and the collection makes an eerily good gift for fans of mysteries and thrillers.
(AG)
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