White Teeth, Red Blood: Selected Vampiric Verses

by Various, Claire Kohda (Introduction)

Poems to make your blood run cold. Poems to make your heart beat faster. Poems to sink your teeth into...

Three centuries of vampiric verse.

Seductively sinister, both frightening and alluring, the undead have always been the perfect vessel for humanity's fears and desires. The poems in this collection of dark delights range across centuries and languages; poems that tell stories, offer warnings, and imagine life in the shadows, by writers such as Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Charles Baudelaire, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Ishmael Reed, and many more.

With an introduction by Claire Kohda, author of Woman, Eating.

Contents

Chilling Tales - poems by Gottfried August Burger, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Robert Southey, Anne Bannerman, John Stagg, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Rafael Campo

Dire Warnings - poems by Heinrich August Ossenfelder, John Keats, Henry Thomas Liddell, James Clerk Maxwell, Charles Baudelaire, Christina Rossetti, Madison Julius Cawein, Rudyard Kipling, Conrad Aiken, Edna St Vincent Millay, James Weldon Johnson

The Vampire Within - poems by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Walter Pater, Delmira Agustini, William Butler Yeats, Ishmael Reed, Dorothy Barresi, John Yau

Genres: Poetry, Horror, Vampires

208 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 11, 2025

About the author

Various is the correct author for any book with multiple unknown authors, and is acceptable for books with multiple known authors, especially if not all are known or the list is very long (over 50).

If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.

Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.

Reviews

[William Darwin,]

While the poems themselves show moments of depth, ambiguity, and openness to multiple interpretations, the introduction significantly undermines the reading experience. Rather than offering neutral or illuminating context, it frames the work almost entirely through contemporary social and political lenses, steering readers toward specific ideological conclusions. This narrow framing feels unnecessary and intrusive, pressuring readers to engage with the poems in prescribed ways instead of forming their own interpretations. The result is an introduction that comes across as didactic and preachy, ultimately detracting from what could have been a richer, more personal encounter with the material.

[coveting.books]

This poetry collection ranges across centuries and languages to bring readers a bevy of dark delights in a nest of vampires literal and metaphorical. Vampires are the ultimate representation of the most frightening and alluring parts of ourselves.

𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐤𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲 𝐯𝐢𝐚 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐓𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐡, 𝐑𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝: 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐕𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐜 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐛𝐲 𝐕𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬