Poems that evoke fear delve into the dark, unsettling aspects of life and imagination. They explore our deepest anxieties, primal fears, and disturbing realities.
The poet skillfully crafts an atmosphere of dread, using haunting imagery, suspenseful narratives, and stark language. Such poems capture the visceral experience of fear, often leaving the reader with a lingering sense of unease.
These verses are a journey into the heart of our shared human fears, offering an exploration of the darker side of our psyche.
Auden’s ‘Consider This and in Our Time’ captures a society poised on the brink, blending serene imagery with ominous undertones of political upheaval.
Fear pulses through the poem, from the “horrifying” rumors to the chaotic imagery of disintegration. Auden uses this fear to expose humanity’s fragility, with threats both internal (repression) and external (political collapse). This pervasive dread reflects the fear of instability that defined the poem’s historical context, making it chillingly resonant.
Dickinson’s ‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass’ captures snakes’ unsettling presence, reflecting fear and human vulnerability amid nature.
The poem is about the emotion of fear as the unknown evokes it. Fear is embedded in the speaker's uneasy anticipation and the snake's deceptive nature. The snake's ability to disguise itself and then vanish creates an atmosphere of apprehension, as the speaker never knows when it might appear again. This unpredictability mirrors the general fear associated with snakes and other unpredictable natural phenomena. The repeated encounters with the snake intensify the sense of unease, indicating the primal fear humans feel when confronted with the natural world's unpredictable and potentially dangerous aspects.
‘Thirteen’ by Caleb Femi is an incredibly powerful poem that uses second-person perspective to help readers better understand the experiences of a thirteen-year-old boy accused of a crime he didn’t commit.
Fear is a very prominent emotion in this poem. Despite its brevity, readers are likely to feel the boy's fear growing from the first lines to the final lines as he realizes that the police officers may mean to harm him.
‘The Early Purges’ brilliantly renders the invasive and persistent effect negative memories can have on a person’s life for years.
Heaney's rendering of fear is brilliant because it captures the subtlety of fear. It is not the kind of abject terror that we might associate with films. Rather, it is a sickening feeling that the same horrors of the past might come back at any moment. It is shown to be a debilitating feeling for many years in the narrator's case.
I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits',
Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’ is an uncompleted long narrative that tells the story of Christabel and Geraldine, featuring supernatural elements.
Fear saturates 'Christabel,' from the eerie nocturnal setting to the sinister presence of Geraldine. The poem deftly explores fear’s many facets: fear of the unknown, fear of betrayal, and fear of evil. The climactic moments, where Geraldine’s true nature threatens to surface, grip the reader with a visceral fear that lingers, showcasing Coleridge’s expertise in invoking terror.
Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market,’ narrates the fantastical tale of Laura and Lizzie, delving into sin, redemption, and sisterhood.
Fear of the goblins and their evil fruits is pervasive in the poem as they make the environment unsafe for young maidens after sunset. The goblins' call, 'Come buy, come buy,' is like a caution sound, instilling fear in Lizzie and Laura as they crouch together and hide from the goblins. Lizzie was so scared, especially after what happened to Jeanie, that she shut her eyes and ears and ran after seeing goblins. Her fear, anxiety, and nervousness grow further as she sees her sister waning and getting closer to death every day. She 'Longed to buy fruit to comfort her, / But feared to pay too dear,' yet at last, with love's power, her fear for her sister's life defeats her fear of goblins, and she confronts the goblins.
‘My Brother at 3 am’ by Natalie Diaz is written in a Malay verse form called pantoum. He believes that something, or someone, “wants to kill [him]. ”
Fear is the most pervasive emotion in the poem, shaping the brother’s frantic plea about the devil. His terror is visceral, stemming from a deep, unshakable paranoia. The repetition of his cries, combined with Diaz’s haunting imagery of the night, intensifies this fear. The mother, although more grounded, is eventually drawn into this emotion as she, too, begins to see what her son fears.
He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps
when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.
O God, he said. O God.
He wants to kill me, Mom.
‘Rubble’ by Jackie Kay is a dramatic monologue that was included in her collection, Darling: New & Selected Poems. It conveys an individual’s cluttered and chaotic mind.
The narrator is clearly afraid that they will not be able to hold things together or worse, that they have already collapsed around them.
William Butler Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’ delves into the hopeless atmosphere of post-World War I Europe through apocalyptic imagery.
Fear is deeply woven into the poem’s apocalyptic imagery. The “blood-dimmed tide” and the “rough beast” conjure terrifying visions of chaos and destruction. The breakdown of order—“The falcon cannot hear the falconer”—creates a sense of helplessness, intensifying the reader’s fear of an uncontrollable future. The surreal, nightmarish quality heightens the fear of the unknown.
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
‘My Papa’s Waltz’ uses a rowdy dance between a father and son as a metaphor for the darker undercurrents of masculine relationships.
One of the reasons Roethke's poem packs such an emotional punch is the way he so subtly tugs on the complicated emotions felt by a child with an abusive parent. The speaker might not admit to being fearful or afraid of their father because those sentiments are also mixed with a desire for reconciliation, admiration, and love. Yet their descriptions of the waltz instill in the reader the perception that the patriarch of this family is someone who inspires fear and obedience in his loved ones.
‘My Parents’ by Stephen Spender is a poem based on bullying and the desire to make friends.
The poem raises the emotion of fear through the speaker’s fear of the rough children. Their physical muscle, verbal threats, and teasing create a vivid picture of the speaker’s fear and helplessness, which conveys the passion of these encounters.
My parents kept me from children who were rough
Who threw words like stones and wore torn clothes
Their thighs showed through rags they ran in the street
And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.
‘Cahoots’ by Carl Sandburg delves into the dark underbelly of a corrupt city, exposing the collusion and exploitation that thrive within its power structures.
The poem evokes the emotion of fear through its depiction of a morally corrupt and lawless society. The speaker's disregard for consequences and the casual acceptance of illegal activities create a sense of unease and insecurity. The use of figurative language such as "steal this city blind" and references to criminal elements like "stick-ups and guns" contribute to a pervasive atmosphere of fear and danger, evoking a heightened sense of vulnerability in the reader.
‘Half-Past Two’ utilizes childish vernacular and mismatched capitalization to reflect the stress of a young boy, who in the past was punished for “Something Very Wrong.”
Fear is another integral emotion in the poem. The child, by not knowing time, becomes afraid of the long duration he is required to wait until he is freed to go home.
‘Our Deepest Fear’ by Marianne Williamson is a popular contemporary poem. It addresses themes of spirituality and inner power.
The poem reframes our understanding of fear, suggesting our deepest anxiety isn't about inadequacy but about our own radiance. This paradoxical take on fear moves beyond simple phobia into existential territory, examining how we fear our own potential for greatness. The progression shows fear transforming from limitation into catalyst for change.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
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