Black Metal Poetry

Here's a totally wicked black metal poem for you.

Skull

by Graham Foust

Such a white planet.

And what scars
the eyes are,

what page the lack of face.

Compare this
to flowers

in a house.


All evil aside, Foust is incredible for his confidence and precision of sound. I feel like there is only one way that people can read his poems because he has nailed them to the page. Not read as in understand but read as in read out loud. My students read this poem this semester. I kept trying to explain how and why it is brilliant. But I think the reason I am in love with his work is a bit beyond my understanding. When I try to say the reason it ends up sounding like mulch. One thing I know about this poem is that I love the grammatical counterpoint. The ambivalence of the third sentence is such a lovely twist. I pick up Foust's books on occasion because it gives me hope, not because of its content but because of the prosody, the confidence, the transformative nature of poetry. I'll stop gushing now & bow out sheepishly with some more black metal.

Here's something I read at the last No Name Reading. I'm on a mission to give black metal remixes the most famous poems in English literary history.

The Black Metal Wheelbarrow (an evil remix)

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with wretched
blood

from the tortured
victims

of evil ritualistic
sacrifice.