Requiem for a Siren: Women Poets of the Pulps

Edgar Allan Poe may be the first writer to come to mind when you think about horror poetry, and he may well be the last. But there’s way more to the genre than quoting ravens. During the heyday of pulp magazines (the 1920s through the 1950s), horror poetry appealed to all readers and writers—not just men. At least a quarter of Weird Tales readers were women, and across 30 years of original, published pulp poetry, a third of the writers were women. Requiem for a Siren collects 101 poems by almost 50 women published in the pages of Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and other pulps. The mothers and godmothers of the genre, these women composed striking lyrics of death, monsters, hauntings, and nightmares. Some names you might recognize, like Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Dorothy Quick, and Leah Bodine Drake. Hopefully, you’ll discover new favorites, too. So keep your damn ravens in their cages, and come on over for some of this “hot unhallowed lust for beauty.” You won’t be sorry.