dark genre

[Doreen Peri]

What makes dark poetry dark?

What is dark humor?

What makes for dark literature?

Is it angst? Gore? Suicide references?

Reflections on depression?

Or is it something else entirely?

What exactly is the dark genre of literature?

Examples, please?

Thank you!

[Doreen Peri]

ok.

i want the Truth.

what is It?

can you help me, please?

i can't find a reliable resource anywhere on the net.

I googled too many times

Clay says when Poe came onto the scene, his genre

created the term dark in regards to literature, but i disagree...

actually, i think the term developed way after that... during the 50's or 60's

and i don't think it's about angst and gore... i think it'e more

about layers of dry wit

or something else entirely.

I recite a few of Poe's poems by heart... since i was a kid

The Bells

Telltale Heart is a horror story.

The Raven is a fantasy.

What is the dark genre... Can we please discuss what fits?

Examples would be helpful.

I'm learning.

That's my entire purpose of being here.

On the planet.

TY.

[judih]

dark poetry treds that twilight path where all thought is half-shadowed - the edges are blurred. There's no melancholy or other sorts of moist emotionalism - it's dry, stark, foreboding. It shamelessly enters the zone where nice people would say: "ssshh, there are children present."

It's macabre, chiarascuro, where black is prevalent and grey is taken as 'lightening the mood' -

when did it start? When people began to explore the taboo sides of life. Take Curt's story of vomitting guts out - that's rather dark humour.

Poe is early 1800's - surely there are earlier examples of dark fiction.

Who else can add something to this?

[Doreen Peri]

Thanks, judih...

More examples would be helpful, yes.

Can you direct me to the story you're referencing?

Can anybody find a definitive authority... a resource on the web ... where I can read more about the genre?

I agree that meloncholy doesn't fit in the genre. I don't think horror stories fit as "dark", either.

It's more subtle than that.

To me, Anne Sexton would be a good example as a poet who wrote dark stuff... but maybe I'm wrong.

I'd like to explore the genre.

Is vampire stuff considered dark? Anne Rice? My son said he thinks so, but I don't. I think that's more of a horror genre.

(gotta go look up chiarascuro ... heh... great word! never heard that word before. )

[Traveller13]

Doreen, I think the reason you can't find clues on the net is a clue in itself

to me dark materials contains things that make people uncomfortable
but not just that
it has to be linked to things that people actually live at the same time
you know, the dark side that you may think that only you have, but that you share with everyone
some people explore it, others deny it to the point of illness, others are so disconnected of it that they can't see it's existence

the most blatant example is death.
humans are, clearly, fascinated by it. they kill in video names, in their imagination, on movie screens. they make up all those stories about it. and more importantly, they do it themselves.
and yet at the same time they feel repelled by it, especially in our society where we create such a dramatical aspect of death.

is this enough to say that humans are naturally pervert?
dark art is the exploration of one's perversities. not necessarily in the freudian sense. perversities are defined by our environment, and are variable.
it's difficult to face because for all this time we've been guided towards the light, towards whiteness. we have been taught to choose white over black. paganism has been dubbed satanism by the christians and shuned away, we no longer celebrate the death of our loved ones, animals are mass-killed in factories where nobody can see them, Snow White and Cinderella have turned into cute fluffy Disney characters for kids, and the black raven with dirt on it's feet has been replaced by a white dove with a branch in the most Holy Bible. a whole part of reality is being turned away from.

we are our own domesticated animals, tied to an imaginary rock by shackle-free bonds, and are afraid to admit it, and are attracted by this truth at the same time, because it touches our primal nature, "who we really are".

I don't know what every dark artist's purpose is. but for me, that is the most interesting aspect.

[gypsyjoker]

not necessarily in the freudian

Well usually when someone says that they mean sex. Poor freud, all that cocaine made him smoke too many cigars. But be that as it may do not think of freud (or pink elephants) as a pyschologist. He makes far better sense as a cultural anthropogist. They say he changed his mind when he wrote Beyond the Pleasure Principle something beyound the PP, the death instinct.

Besides death maybe what frightens most people is sex. So much moral indignation over slick willies blow job. Bush was such a welcome relief. A fine moral man who woud never fuk Harriet his "office wife" Yes we all have the that dark sea within us. We all have monsters from the id. Some of us have better night vision, we do not fear the evil in others, we watch for that beam in our own eyes.

D i am not sure if this is any help, all I can say is that I get bored pretty quickly with supernatural evil.. That genre what ever you call it, Anne Rice novels? a nice mixture of death and sex, how much more dark can you get.

J I missed the bit about the vomit. I got shitty karma, and you know it alwas catches my eyes. I been thinking about something funnier than vomit lately. Pheglm, mucous, the dark green squishy stuff that looks like a half chewed cactus button.

and this for just the hell of it.

We must now eat beautiful women.

My darkness, the one that I think did a nice job of creating beauty from suffering goes back to the Athenians mostly.

My muse gave her daddy a hell of a headache. They had to chop his head open with an axe and she was born from his forehead. Because her father ate her mother when she was pregnant with her. And she left Hector to die like a fox on the run.

ramble, the darkest genre for me is Dr. Swift, or Dr Freud, or the Athenians. The darkest place I know is between a woman's thighs. Metaphorically speaking of course.

[judih]

Dor and all,
link to Curt (4 degrees)'s story :

http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1219

[e_dog]

the "authority" on dark humours is Andre Breton, the Surrealist leader and writer. he's got a book (which i've not read but heard of) called Black Humour or comedy or something.






consider: the last line of Hardt and Negri's EMPIRE, "the irrepressible lightness and joy of being communist."