Killer Verse

Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem is a spine-tingling collection of terrifically creepy poems about the deadly art of murder. The villains and victims who populate these pages range from Cain and Abel and Bluebeard and his wives to Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper, and Mafia hit men. The literary forms they inhabit are just as varied, from the colorful melodramas of old Scottish ballads to the hard-boiled poetry of twentieth-century noir, from lighthearted comic riffs to profound poetic musings on murder. Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, W. H. Auden, Stevie Smith, Mark Doty, Frank Bidart, Toi Derricotte, Lynn Emanuel, and Cornelius Eady are only a few of the many poets, old and new, whose work is captured in this heart-stopping—and criminally entertaining—collection.

Skaldic Verse and the Poetics of Saga Narrative is a study of the varying relationships between verse and prose in a series of Old Norse-Icelandic saga narratives. It shows how the interplay of skaldic verse, with its metrical intricacy and cryptic diction, and saga prose, with its habitual spare clarity, can be used to achieve a wide variety of sophisticated stylistic and psychological effects. In sagas, there is a fundamental distinction between verses which are ostensibly quoted to corroborate what is stated in the narrative, and verses which are presented as the speech of characters in the saga. Corroborative verses are typical of-but not confined to-historical writings, the verses acting as a footnote to the narrative. Dialogue verses, with their illusion that saga characters break into verse at crucial points in the story, belong to the realm of fiction. This study, which focuses on historical writings such as Ágrip and Heimskringla, and three of the major family sagas, Eyrbyggja saga, Gisla saga and Grettis saga, shows that a close reading of the prosimetrum in the narrative can be used to chart the complex and delicate boundaries between history and fiction in the sagas. When skaldic stanzas are presented as the dialogue of saga characters, the characteristic naturalism of these narratives is breached. But some saga authors, as this book shows, extend still further the expressiveness of saga narrative, presenting skaldic stanzas as the soliloquies of saga characters. This technique enables the direct articulation of emotion, and hence dramatic focalization of the narrative and the creation of psychological climaxes. As an epilogue, Heather O'Donoghue considers the absence of such effects in Hrafnkels saga-a highly literary narrative without verses.

Offering an interdisciplinary approach to narrative, this book investigates storyworlds and minds in narratives across media, from literature to digital games and reality TV, from online sadomasochism to oral history databases, and from horror to hallucinations. It addresses two core questions of contemporary narrative theory, inspired by recent cognitive-scientific developments: what kind of a construction is a storyworld, and what kind of mental functioning can be embedded in it? Minds and worlds become essential facets of making sense and interpreting narratives as the book asks how story-internal minds relate to the mind external to the storyworld, that is, the mind processing the story. With essays from social scientists, literary scholars, linguists, and scholars from interactive media studies answering these topical questions, the collection brings diverse disciplines into dialogue, providing new openings for genuinely transdisciplinary narrative theory. The wide-ranging selection of materials analyzed in the book promotes knowledge on the latest forms of cultural and social meaning-making through narrative, necessary for navigating the contemporary, mediatized cultural landscape. The combination of theoretical reflection and empirical analysis makes this book an invaluable resource for scholars and advanced students in fields including literary studies, social sciences, art, media, and communication.

Dale Patrick examines the first five books of the Bible--the Pentateuch--the Law. He provides an effective method for studying and understanding this vital part of the canon. His introduction concentrates on the exposition of the major thrust of Old Testament Law: the Ten Commandments, the Book of the Covenant, the Deuteronomic Law, the Holiness Code, and the Priestly Law. Law--rules and regulations, concepts and principles, legal codes--written and unwritten. Patrick tackles important questions surrounding the formation of the Law. What is the Law? How was it formulated? What implications does the Law of the Israelites have for Christians today? Patrick's deft handling and answering of these questions results in a book that provides a means to understand the specific rules governing the concepts and principles of the written law so that we may grasp the unwritten law; i.e., the justice, righteousness, and holiness required by God. Patrick offers critical exposition in a format that makes a seemingly difficult and esoteric part of the Bible accessible to the reader. This introductory text serves as a springboard to further study.

"This collection of essays examines one of the most important, yet understudied, media authors of all time--Norman Corwin--using him as a critical lens to consider the history of multimedia authorship, particularly in the realm of sound. Known for seven decades as the 'poet laureate' of radio, Corwin is most famous for his radio dramas, which reached tens of millions of listeners around the world and contributed to radio drama's success as a mass media form in the 1930s and 1940s. But Corwin was a pioneer in multiple media, including cinema, theater, TV, public service broadcasting, journalism, and even cantata. In each of these areas, Corwin had a distinctive approach to sonic aesthetics and mastery of multiple aspects of media production, relying in part on his inventive atmospheric effects in the studio both prerecorded, and, more impressively, live in real time. From the front lines of World War II to his role as Chief of Special Projects for United Nations Radio and his influence on media today, the political and social aspect of Corwin's work is woven into these essays. With a foreword by Michele Hilmes and contributions from Thomas Doherty, Mary Ann Watson, Shawn VanCour, David Ossman and others, this volume cements Corwin's reputation as perhaps the greatest writer in the history of radio, while also showing that his long career is a neglected model of multimedia authorship."--Provided by publisher.

For the Araweté the person is always in transition, an outlook expressed in the mythology of their gods, whose cannibalistic ways they imitate.

In Melissa Balmain’s Walking in on People, the serious is lightened with a generous serving of wit and humor, and the lighthearted is enriched with abundant wisdom. She shows us how poetry can be fun yet grounded in everyday challenges and triumphs, with subjects ranging from the current and hip (Facebook posts, online dating, layoffs, retail therapy, cell-phone apps, trans fat), to the traditional and time-tested (marriage, child-rearing, love, death). Through it all, her craft is masterful, with a formal dexterity deployed with precision in a showcase of forms such as the villanelle, ballad, triolet, nonce, and the sonnet. It is little wonder then that Walking in on People is the winner of the 2013 Able Muse Book Award, as selected by the final judge, X.J. Kennedy. This is a collection that will not only entertain thoroughly, but also enlighten and reward the reader. PRAISE FOR WALKING IN ON PEOPLE: Walking in on People grabbed me with its very title, and it never let go. Poetry these days is rarely so entertaining, so beautifully crafted, so sharp of eye, yet so wise and warm of heart. Melissa Balmain keenly perceives faults in people and in our popular culture, with piercing wit but never bitterness. Don’t miss the wonderful “Lament,” on what it takes to write a best seller, or “The Marital Bed,” a love poem with naturalistic detail. She really commands her art. Indeed, I think any poet who rhymes lobsters and Jersey mobsters deserves to have an equestrian statue of herself erected in Bangor or Newark or both. — X.J. Kennedy (Judge, 2013 Able Muse Book Award) Melissa Balmain’s poems add to the rhythmic bounce of light verse a darker, more cutting humor. The result is an infectious, often hilarious blend of the sweet and the lethal, the charming and the acidic. — Billy Collins So many of the poems in Melissa Balmain’s triumphant debut lodge themselves in that Frostian zone where they are hard to get rid of. They recur in the mind in moments of hilarity and pathos, of exaltation and mortification, and they never let us go. — David Yezzi (from the foreword) Accessible and entertaining poetry doesn't often prevail over the grim personal memoir in poetry contests, but this time the judges were smart. They went for Melissa Balmain's stylish and always metrically perfect wit. You can relate to this poetry if you have ever: longed to save the restaurant lobsters from their fate, lost your lover to his electronic devices, faced the fact that babies are ugly and toddlers suppress your genius, or (of course) walked in on people in all the wrong places. With diverse forms, inventive rhymes, the right word always chosen and a sense of humor always in evidence—you really have no excuse not to buy this book. — Gail White

Collects Edge of Spider-Verse (2014) #1-5, Edge of Spider-Verse (2022) #1-5, Edge of Spider-Verse (2023) #1-4. Traverse the Spider-Verse with a swarm of Spiders familiar, fresh and flabbergasting! As the vicious Morlun targets wall-crawlers across all realities, Spider-Man Noir returns, Gwen Stacy is Earth-65's Spider-Woman and Peni Parker dons the sensational mech-suit known as SP//dr! When the end of the Spider-Verse looms, Spider-Ham and Araña head into action, the legacy of Spider-UK passes to a new champion, Sergei Kravinoff becomes the Hunter-Spider and Spinstress is an all-singing, all-slinging princess! Plus: The Spider-Mobile rides again! Spider-Rex faces the Venomsaurus! Billie Morales is all grown up as Spider-Smasher! Make way for Spider-Boy, the forgotten sidekick! Who is Headline? And even more amazing arachnid adventurers!