• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Shocking poems & short stories

SFG75

Well-Known Member
What poem do you think is the most shocking in classical literature? To me, it's Edward Arlington Robinson's Ricahrd Cory. A few of his other works hit you at the very end and get your hair on the back or your neck to stand up. In regards to short stories, I'd have to say the award goes to Ambrose Bierce's piece Chickamauga, which is of course, based on the infamous civil war battle. So, what poems and short stories get your hair standing on end?
 
I'll have to think about poetry, but one collection of short stories comes mind..I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down by William Gay..lots of eerie images, very well written. I didn't like the book that much simply because it was too wierd and morbid for my taste, but I can't fault Gay's writing at all.
 
Can't say that I've heard of Gray. Yet another work on my "to read" list.;) Another great short story-The Cask of Amontillado. That one never fails to impress high school kids.
 
Hmmm... I'd have to say Vonnegut's futuristic (dys)(u)topia Harrison Bergeron. That one sucked me right in on the first sentence and wouldn't let me go until I finished it, leaving me beaten and bruised. Great story from the master of satire.:cool:
 
Since you mentioned Ambrose Bierce, have you read An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

Now THAT one made my skin twist into knots.:eek:
 
CattiGuen said:
Since you mentioned Ambrose Bierce, have you read An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

Now THAT one made my skin twist into knots.:eek:

I can't say that I have, but I'll look it up. Old "bitter Bierce" had a way with words....and emotion.:eek:
 
The Metamorphosis by Kafka is up there, that's for sure!

The Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge was made into a TV short - I think it was actually a Twilight Zone that was hardly ever aired - but I did see it once.
 
Oh my...Edward Arlington Robinson's Richard Cory is amazing, SFG75. After reading that, I'd have to say that it's the most shocking by far.
 
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson...it has stayed with me since I read it years (and years) ago in high school. A recent re-read confirmed that as an adult, I still find it pretty shocking.
 
rnmichelle said:
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson...it has stayed with me since I read it years (and years) ago in high school. A recent re-read confirmed that as an adult, I still find it pretty shocking.

We had to read that in school. What an odd story, eh?
 
CattiGuen said:
Hmmm... I'd have to say Vonnegut's futuristic (dys)(u)topia Harrison Bergeron. That one sucked me right in on the first sentence and wouldn't let me go until I finished it, leaving me beaten and bruised. Great story from the master of satire.:cool:


what a fantastic story. i read it the first time in middle school and it had such a profound affect on me, espessially because i'm a dancer, but i couldn't, for a long time, remember the name of it, only what it was about. it wasn't until college when i re-discovered it and it's probably my favorite short story.

another good one is "the man who knew belle star" by richard bausch and also "menagerie, a child's fable" by charles johnson
roald dahl has some pretty fabulous short stories as well... "lamb to the slaughter" - brilliant!
 
My favorite

for a shocking poem

Seven Old Men by Charles Baudelaire

O swarming city, city full of dreams,
Where in a full day the spectre walks and speaks;
Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins
My story flows as flows the rising sap.

One morn, disputing with my tired soul,
And like a hero stiffening all my nerves,
I trod a suburb shaken by the jar
Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified
The houses either side of that sad street,
So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood
Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist,
Unclean and yellow, inundated space--
A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul.
Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags
Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks
Should have brought alms in floods upon his head,
Without the misery gleaming in his eye,
Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed
To have been washed with gall; the bitter frost
Sharpened his glance; and from his chin a beard
Sword-stiff and ragged, Judas-like stuck forth.
He was not bent but broken: his backbone
Made a so true right angle with his legs,
That, as he walked, the tapping stick which gave
The finish to the picture, made him seem
Like some infirm and stumbling quadruped
Or a three-legged Jew. Through snow and mud
He walked with troubled and uncertain gait,
As though his sabots trod upon the dead,
Indifferent and hostile to the world.

His double followed him: tatters and stick
And back and eye and beard, all were the same;
Out of the same Hell, indistinguishable,
These centenarian twins, these spectres odd,
Trod the same pace toward some end unknown.
To what fell complot was I then exposed?
Humiliated by what evil chance?
For as the minutes one by one went by
Seven times I saw this sinister old man
Repeat his image there before my eyes!

Let him who smiles at my inquietude,
Who never trembled at a fear like mine,
Know that in their decrepitude's despite
These seven old hideous monsters had the mien
Of beings immortal.

Then, I thought, must I,
Undying, contemplate the awful eighth;
Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double;
Disgusting Phoenix, father of himself
And his own son? In terror then I turned
My back upon the infernal band, and fled
To my own place, and closed my door; distraught
And like a drunkard who sees all things twice,
With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick,
Wounded by mystery and absurdity!

In vain my reason tried to cross the bar,
The whirling storm but drove her back again;
And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck,
Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea.
 
Two short stories that I have read and consider "shocking" are Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl and The Long Walk by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman). Both are great reads.
 
This is NOT a short story. It's a short novel.
But is IS shocking. MUCH more shocking than ANYTHING ELSE mentioned in this thread (IMHO of course).
The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kozinski
 
MC-
My post was unclear. I was not referring to your post.
I was referring to The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kozinski, which is not really a short story, but a short novel.
While we're at it, Cockpit, by Kozinski is another shocking read. Also, not a short story though.
Cockpit is one of those books that I read years and years ago, and remember quite clearly, and think about relatively frequently.
I'm sorry I can't thing of any poems or short stories that approach Kozinski in being shocking. But that's probably because there aren't any.
 
What poem do you think is the most shocking in classical literature? To me, it's Edward Arlington Robinson's Ricahrd Cory.

Oh my God, our freshman English teacher made us read that, and I loved it. I loved the irony and the twist at the end. Did you know that it was made into a song?

SFG75 said:
Another great short story-The Cask of Amontillado. That one never fails to impress high school kids.

Ooooh. We read that last year too, which got me really into Poe. I have to say that The Gold Bug was quite good too, but The Cask of Amontillado was the greatest by far. My class was squirming at the thought of
Fortunado's incarceration in the cellar wall.
Absolutely magnificent.
 
Ooooh. We read that last year too, which got me really into Poe. I have to say that The Gold Bug was quite good too, but The Cask of Amontillado was the greatest by far. My class was squirming at the thought of
Fortunado's incarceration in the cellar wall.
Absolutely magnificent.

Yes; unfortunately King tries to jack (or mimic) the idea with his short story--Dolan's Cadallac, and fails miserably.

The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Fall on the House of Usher is even better.
 
Back
Top