Poems with Sharp Edges

I've always had a taste for poetry that was a bit sharp, particularly with the knife turn at the end. The one that comes to mind first in this vein is:

Incident
Countee Cullen

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee;
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

Early exposure to the Norton Anthology of poetry set the bar for me. I was enchanted to find that some of the poems I'd studied had been sung ballads, come down through the aural tradition. While murder ballads have been a steady diet in my singing repertoire, less gruesomely detailed, stark and shocking poems like Richard Corey by Richard Arlington Robinson woke many up to poetry not being all loveydovey saccharine.

Though even the stark, bare bones can be put to music:

I Shall Not Care
Sara Teasdale

When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you shall lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

I've hauled out the Dorothy Parker already, so what on earth is left? There are the outwardly facetious, yet sharp poems. Since high school (or because of it?), this one by Samuel Hoffenstein has had my vote:

Love Song

Your little hands,
Your little feet,
Your little mouth --
Oh, God, how sweet!

Your little nose,
Your little ears,
Your eyes, that shed
Such little tears!

Your little voice,
So soft and kind;
Your little soul,
Your little mind!

Earth
John Hall Wheelock

"A planet doesn't explode of itself,: said drily
The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air-
"That they were able to do it is poof that highly
Intelligent beings must have been living there."

Also on the facetious side is Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies (where illustration is part of the wry).


For down and dirty GOTCHA with nice scansion and meter, you just can't beat Houseman. Although his Is My Team Plowing has the best knife twist ending:
...I cheer a dead man's sweetheart
Never ask me whose.
Not as succinctly sharp edged, yet the poem that did the most to put me on the trail of this sort of poem is:

-from A Stropshire Lad
A. E. Housman

"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour
The better for the embittered hour;
It will do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that sprang to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
--I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.