 Horror/Scary: June 17, 2020 Issue [#10229] |
This week: The Lyric Voice of Horror Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading  
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"Soon from noxious birth began;
Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold;
The ground was cleft, and mad auras rolled
Down on the quaking citadels of man.
Then, crushing what chanced to mound in play,
The idiot Chaos blew Earth's dust away."
~ H.P. Lovecraft ~
"All fled-all done, so lift me on the pyre-
The Feast is over, and the lamps expire."
~ Robert E. Howard ~
"..quoth the raven, nevermore."
~ E.A. Poe
Welcome, fellow writers of prose and verse to this this week's edition of the WDCHorror/Scary Newsletter, where we will explore the lyric [im]balance of horror |
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Greetings, fellow weavers of images, places, things, entities (sentient and otherwise), probing the darkness, in its myriad forms within and without
Think about it ~ Horror is not a generic abstract; not a fixed formula. It's in the details ~ engaging the senses to feel, see, hear and taste the darkness the writer envisions or imagines. Likewise, poetry is a snapshot, an image in time, place, imagination expressed in words that ignite the reader/speaker to see, hear, taste, smell, imagine that image.
So, horror, by its nature, invites lyric expression.
"I'm scared of the dark"
becomes
"I fear the night/ when cerulean skies/
give way to death's watch/ that in darkness lies."
Okay, more words, not writing it tight, but does not the second image make you see why the speaker fears the dark; what he sees/imagines lurking at the crossroads of day and night? I can sense the immediacy in this vivid image in both a story and a poem.
Horror in lyric form appears in stories and verse from tales of flesh-rending, slasher horror to that which lurks behind the ordinary, the mundane of everyday life. Poems dealing with these topics can be short or long, detailing horrific stand-alone scenes or telling complete stories. Poems featuring horror as a subject can take on any poetry style, can be rhymed or unrhymed, and make use of literary devices (assonance, alliteration) used in other types of poetry. A horror poem touches on the same elements found in a horror story but, being a poem, each stanza, each line, each word, is immediate and vivid, engaging the senses of the listener. Horror in verse, therefore, paints an image that's sensual (engages the senses - smell, taste sight, imagination), immediate, and vivid.
It may not look like a poem (i.e., set in groupings of stanzas) but "'Masque of the Red Death' [is] assuredly a poem in every sense of the word save the metrical one, and owes as much of its power to the aural cadence as to visual imagery" quoting H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature.
 When wielding horror in lyric verse (or prose), consider holding to one genre of horror, be it vampyric, splatter-punk, psychological, just a few possibilities, then set the scene with vivid words that engage the senses and lead the reader/listener into your image of horror you wish him to perceive. If you can work in a rhyme without forcing, try it. If not, capture the scene in vivid words, perhaps with assonance or alliteration.
 Look for the horror of everyday things, the subjective horrors. There's nothing inherently horrific about a kid's bicycle, but set in the right context, i.e., overturned in the crosswalk, one wheel still turning; no rider in sight, one pink sneaker melting. Okay, you can weave one better ~ but can you see here the ominous image, hear the spokes click, click, click, smell the smoldering sneaker. (Hear the cadence, the assonance?)
 Write visually. Think about your favorite horror movies as you construct the lines of your poem. The more visual you can make the horror on the page, the better you will be able to draw your readers in. Description is a key element of horror. Design your lyric description to disgust your readers or to send a chill along their spines.
 Touch readers with visceral writing. Horror poetry isn't intellectual, it touches readers on a primal level by addressing the fears that many people share, for example burning alive! What scared you as a kid? Was it the creature in the closet? The skeleton in the brush behind the garage (albeit a ferret, most likely)? Or, as an adult, do you fear birds? or the scream of fire engines? locked in the dark? a phone ringing in the middle of the night?
Horror is in the ordinary, in the normal and ab-normal, in the mundane and in the imagined. It's not pretty. Wordsmiths use tools to carve each horrific image; and in lyric verse, whether prose or poetry, it's vivid, immediate.
Trust yourself, your wordsmithing ability, to convey in lyric images what unsettles you, what makes you look over your shoulder, and your readers will likewise cringe, looking back over their own.
Lyric horror in verse is welcomed in our Community. There is also a market welcoming such lyric horror in prose and verse for publication. Check out the guidelines here,
https://gallowshillmagazine.com/submission-guidelines/
Write On 
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Enter here otherworlds woven in dark lyric verse ~ read, engage, share in the lyric tale with a review, perchance 
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I invite each of you engaged in the exploration to have some fun with it and weave your own horrific best in lyric form  Share a link here and you may see your work appear in full gory horror in a future issue
Until the next time,
Write On 
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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