<b>In time for Halloween: a one-of-a-kind hardcover collection of poems from ancient times to the present about monsters both human and otherwise. EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY POCKET POETS.</b><br><br>The poems of <i>Monster Verse</i> range in focus from extreme examples of human monstrousness--murderers, cannibals, despotic Byzantine empresses--to the creatures of myth and nightmare: dragons, sea serpents, mermaids, gorgons, sirens, vampires, witches, and all kinds of winged, fanged, and fire-breathing grotesques. The ghastly parade includes Beowulf's Grendel, Homer's Circe, William Morris's Fafnir, Lewis Carroll's Jabberwock, Robert Lowell's man-eating mermaid, Oriana Ivy's Baba Yaga, Thom Gunn's take on Jeffrey Dahmer, and, of course, Shakespeare's hybrid creature Caliban, of whom Prospero famously concedes, &quot;This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.&quot;<i>Monster Verse</i> is both a delightful carnival of literary horror and an entertainingly provocative investigation of what it means to be human.