For the Love of POE-try: Classic Dark Poetry Recs for October

Stretching back to poets like Dante Alighieri with the despair and depth that arose from his most celebrated work, The Inferno, to voices like Sylvia Plath, whose poetic voice was filled with rage and pushed against societal norms for women in her day, dark poetry has no official starting point. 

From Dante to the Gothic horror of Edgar Allan Poe, many often considered him to be the founder of dark poetry, though that’s up for debate. 

Edgar Allan Poe’s poems, such as “Alone,” “The Haunted Palace,” and, of course, “The Raven,” were known not only for their rhythmic ornaments but also for their thematic depictions of death, the afterlife, and otherworldly conjurings that were considered a departure from more Gothic poetic themes. 

Beyond Poe, Baudelaire’s dark eroticism and rebellious nature paved the way for the new symbolists and the development of surrealist literature, blending expectations and transforming the way we think about dark poetry.

Dark poetry encompasses elements of melancholy, grief, and death, and has come to encompass a wider range of emotions and situations that are often more speculative. Crimes, thrillers, and scenes depicting gore often fall into the growing tent that is dark poetry, alongside the poetry of weird fiction. 

Dark poetry has evolved to encompass far more than what Edgar Allan Poe wrote about over 170 years ago. And the raven itself has become something like a piece of horror iconography associated with at least five feature film adaptations, and piles of trademarked materials based on this one piece of horror motif. 

And while there is the technical definition of what dark poetry is, it may be as it relates to the fundamental writing—the beauty comes from the ever-changing and shifting genre definition that makes dark poetry that much more inclusive. 

Thanks for taking the first step in this journey with me, and I’d like to leave a list of a few dark poems for further reading, with the understanding that I’ve provided a more inclusive definition of dark poetry. 

I know this list barely scratches the surface in terms of what tenebrous words lurk on the pages out there, but it serves as a starting point for those who wish to learn more. I have included others that also have surrealist and fantastical elements on this list.