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Poets in Hell Janet E. Morris (Editor) , Chris Morris , Bruce Durham , Michael A. Armstrong , Tom Barczak , Larry Atchley Jr. , Matthew Kirshenblatt , Beth W. Patterson , more… Michael H. Hanson , Yelle Hughes , Joe Bonadonna , Nancy Asire , Bill Snider , Deborah Koren , Shebat Legion , Richard Groller , Bill Barnhill , Jack William Finley , Pdmac …less

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Poets in Hell

Janet E. Morris (Editor) , Chris Morris , Bruce Durham , Michael A. Armstrong , Tom Barczak , Larry Atchley Jr. , Matthew Kirshenblatt , Beth W. Patterson , more… Michael H. Hanson , Yelle Hughes , Joe Bonadonna , Nancy Asire , Bill Snider , Deborah Koren , Shebat Legion , Richard Groller , Bill Barnhill , Jack William Finley , Pdmac …less

Poets in Hell Janet E. Morris (Editor) , Chris Morris , Bruce Durham , Michael A. Armstrong , Tom Barczak , Larry Atchley Jr. , Matthew Kirshenblatt , Beth W. Patterson , more… Michael H. Hanson , Yelle Hughes , Joe Bonadonna , Nancy Asire , Bill Snider , Deborah Koren , Shebat Legion , Richard Groller , Bill Barnhill , Jack William Finley , Pdmac …less The best, the worst, and ugliest bards in perdition vie for Satan's favor as poets slam one another, Satan's Fallen Angels smirk up their sleeves, and the illiterati have their day.Find out why the damned deserve their fates as Hell's Hacks sink to new poetical depths.

Poets in Hell Details

Date : Published June 11th 2014 by Perseid Press ISBN : 9780991465439 Janet E. Morris (Editor) , Chris Morris , Bruce Durham , Michael A. Armstrong , Tom Barczak , Larry Atchley Jr. , Matthew Kirshenblatt , Beth W. Patterson , more… Michael H. Hanson , Yelle Author : Hughes , Joe Bonadonna , Nancy Asire , Bill Snider , Deborah Koren , Shebat Legion , Richard Groller , Bill Barnhill , Jack William Finley , Pdmac …less Format : Paperback 410 pages Genre : Fantasy, Literary Fiction, Horror, Dark Fantasy, Short Stories

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Download and Read Free Online Poets in Hell Janet E. Morris (Editor) , Chris Morris , Bruce Durham , Michael A. Armstrong , Tom Barczak , Larry Atchley Jr. , Matthew Kirshenblatt , Beth W. Patterson , more… Michael H. Hanson , Yelle Hughes , Joe Bonadonna , Nancy Asire , Bill Snider , Deborah Koren , Shebat Legion , Richard Groller , Bill Barnhill , Jack William Finley , Pdmac …less

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From Reader Review Poets in Hell for online ebook

Brian Bigelow says

If you end up in hell, and there is a poetry reading, make sure you come up with the worst poem you can. Quality of your verse doesn't matter it's pretty obvious. In fact, quite reverse is what is rewarded if you want to call it a reward for your efforts. Yes, I enjoyed this greatly and look forward to reading more of the series when I get a chance.

Joe Bonadonna says

Having contributed 2 stories to Poets in Hell, I do not feel right about reviewing this 17th volume in the classic Heroes in Hell shared-universe series. And I suppose I can't post this without giving the book some kind of star rating. So forgive me if I give it a good rating, because the writers assembled for this volume are top-notch, and I am honored to be a part of this edition. If I may, I'd like to tell you a little about this 2014 volume in the Heroes in Hell series, and my part in this grand project.

First, writing for Heroes in Hell is hard work: one needs to do a lot of research, because most of the characters in this Miltonian shared-universe are historical figures, figures of myth and legend, Biblical figures, and even some famous fictional characters - provided some link to an actual person can be found, such as the Dracula and Vlad Tepes connection.

Now, the second thing about writing for Hell is that it made me "up my game." The series is not only character-driven, it is allegorical, dramatic, poignant, high comedy and grim tragedy; it runs the gamut of genres and emotions. I was playing in the same park with some damned fine writers of imaginative literature, and something in the infernal nature of Hell demands and commands a writer to do the best he can, to go above and beyond what he/she has done before.

Hell is addictive. It's an obsession. Hell has its rules, but what the rules do is force you to be more creative, to think outside the box: the rules are not restrictive, they are liberating. Once you pick your characters and start your research, you find things, you learn things you can use to make those characters live and breathe and jump off the page. Yeah, writing for Hell is hard work, but it's also one helluva good time. I love every moment I spend in Hell - and I spend a lot of time there. Now, let me give you a brief run-down on each story in Poets Hell.

Author and jazz musician Chris Morris gets the ball rolling with his story, "Words," in which the first Bible writer drafts a deal with the Devil that saves some skins from deeper damnation. Next up, Janet Morris and Chris Morris team up for "Seven Against Hell," wherein Odysseus calls on Diomedes and friends to save his skin as Sappho and Homer sing their glory. Meanwhile, Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe find out that the play isn't always the thing, proving for all eternity that Hell is more than just a frame of mind. The Blind Bard and the Bard of Avon discover that heroism is more than skin deep.

In "Reunion," by Nancy Asire, Attila the Hun faces a thousand cuts of sibling rivalry at its most hellish. Then Bruce Durham gives us "Hell-hounds," wherein Marconi, Bell and Antonio Meucci become prey to a pack of four legged, deadly denizens of hell as they run cable TV to the Pandemonium Theatre. Will they survive? And could the arrival of Snorri Sturluson and one yarn-spinning, sword-swinging Robert E. Howard turn the tide?

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Along comes Jack William Finley with "The Kid with No Name," who learns that fame can be hard to come by in perdition and Dorothy Parker is reminded that pride is still a sin, even in Hell. "All Hell to Pay" is Deborah Koren's story where Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp get their unjust deserts.

Larry Atchley Jr's "Poetic Injustice" has Samuel Taylor Coleridge searching for the missing lines to his poem, Kubla Khan, and performing at a poetry slam with William Blake and Ragnar Loddbrok, where they must answer for their sins. Meanwhile, Guy Fawkes looks for answers about who was really behind the failed assault on heaven and if there can be salvation for any of the damned in hell. Next up is "When You Gaze into an Abyss," Matthew Kirshenblatt's tale of Lilith, the first wife of Adam, who pines to escape the confines of Hell while Friedrich Nietzsche stares into the abyss... and decides that he has had enough.

In Tom Barczak's "Pride and Penance," the Jabberwocky gets a taste for hell's damnedest architects. The author who calls himself 'pdmac' hits a "Grand Slam" when Anne Sexton and Li Po, China's greatest poet, share judging duties with Camus and Sartre and learn the true meaning of a poetry slam.

Then here comes Yelle Hughes' "Red Tail's Corner," wherein Dionysus, the god of wine and madness, along with the riddle-loving Sphinx of Greece, finds out that Satan loves poetry, but Erra and the Seven Sibitti do not. Richard Groller follows through with "Faust III," in which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe completes his poetic Magnum Opus in Hell, with the opening day of the play drawing the attention and ire of His Satanic Majesty himself.

And then Bill Snider records the fun with his "Tapestry of Sorrows and Sighs," wherein Caliban joins the poetry show, and Sycorax has to know, where did her baby go? All the while Fionn and Merlin play their games in the shadows.

My collaboration with Shebat Legion, "Undertaker's Holiday," reveals that even Hell's Undertaker needs a holiday from the Mortuary, as David Koresh, Reverend Jim Jones, Ovid, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the 'Fellowship of the Thing' soon find out.

Next, Beth W. Patterson presents "Haiku d'Etat," where Robert Burns and Stephen Foster, stuck with one another for eternity, cultivate their prickly friendship in the treacherous Bayou d'Enfer until a hellicane demolishes their home. The eye of the storm transports the duo to a different dimension: the Shinto underworld of Yomi. There they meet the acid-tongued Matsuo Basho, whose speech may yield clues for an escape.

Bill Barnhill follows with "A Mother's Heart," telling us how Plato and Lilith try to save Hell's Atlantis from a second dunking with the help of a giant squirrel. In my solo effort, "We the Furious," His Satanic Majesty sends Mary Shelley and Mob hitman Johnny Fortune to unionize the Uncubi, who are the unpublished poets and authors in Hell. But first they must save Galatea, Victor Frankenstein and his infamous Monster from a vampire-like Lemuel Gulliver, who is using the Uncubi to help him overthrow Satan.

"Damned Poets Society" is Michael H. Hanson's offering: Baudelaire, Poe, Frost, and other dead masters of verse join together for Hell's greatest public recitation. The poets slam the afterlife but are slammed in return by the greatest poetry critic of them all, Satan himself.

Now we're near the finish line with Michael A. Armstrong's "All We Need of Hell": Together again after the Bridge mission, Hart Crane, Emily Dickinson, and Ezra Pound go into the deepest, darkest, coldest manifestation of hell, the Inuit underworld. Guided by Atanazauq, a powerful shaman, they test the power of poetry against the ancient gods. And finally, Janet Morris closes this edition with "Dress Rehearsal," wherein Helen of Troy gets Marlowe and Shakespeare in hot water for taking poetic license.

And there you have it, Poets in Hell. A little something for everyone: heroic fantasy and sword & sorcery,

PDF File: Poets in Hell... 4 Read and Download Ebook Poets in Hell... thrillers, horror, romance, touches of science fiction and steampunk - they're all here. It begins with a gift from Satan to all the Poets in Hell...but you'd think by now these guys would know better. Right? Not a chance! And from there on, our poete maxime infernalis have free rein. At the end, by the skin of their teeth, our heroes... Well, I'd better not tell you that. I'll just say that Satan had his way with all of us, this time around.

So come visit us in Hell and enjoy the company.

BYO pitchfork.

Paul Freeman says

It’s hard to know what to expect from a book titled ‘Poets in Hell’, at least I hadn’t a clue until I turned the first page. What I got was something quite mad, that’s mad in an absolutely wild, clever, surreal and brilliant way.

I like fantasy, and I like it dark, this is probably what attracted me to a book set in the vast expanse of hell, what a brilliant playground for a group of writers to unleash their imaginations. Of course, the idea of a collection of stories about poets doesn’t exactly conjure an image of action and adventure, but I can say, this group of wordsmiths may have lived sedate, studious lives, but death gets seriously real for them. There is such a wild, eclectic mix of characters in this collection, all bound together with a common theme, and a running consistency that speaks of very clever world building, behind the scenes. Although each author has his or her own take on hell and the, madcap adventures they put their characters through, there are also common themes and characters binding the collection together and giving the book a strong feel of oneness, giving the reader the feel of roving through the many layers of hell, like some kind of traveller roaming through space and time witnessing all of the action up close.

As I said there are consistent rules running through the collection. Wars are fought in hell, murders committed, anything that happened in life can happen in hell, but generally with horrible consequences. Food tastes like shit, literally, nothing is as it seems, if something appears good it’s most likely just a trick of the devil’s to torment the soul even further. Shakespeare, Yeats, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Helen of Troy… the cast is endless and limitless. They live, love and lose all in hell.

A good book? Hell yeah!

A.L. Butcher says

Where could one find Shakespeare, Marlowe, Homer, Diomedes, Frank Nitti, Victor Frankenstein, Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley and Merlin in one place? The answer is Janet and Chris Morris’s shared world of Hell. Aspiring authors, renowned poets and playwrites vie for attention, fame and recognition, with the odd exception most fail in many diabolic ways.

The stories range from the deeply moving, to the heroic, to the downright amusing as the denizens double and triple cross one another, form uneasy alliances, and try and outwit Satan, not to mention try to win the poetry slam....

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Although written by a variety of authors the stories flow well, and the characters complement each other. Dark and delicious, devious and deadly with devilry aplenty in the darkest realm – is a perfect summing up of this instalment of Heroes in Hell. Most certainly fantasy at its darkest and wittiest!

William O'Brien says

Poets in Hell (Heroes in Hell Book 17) by Janet Morris

An astounding anthology of poetry, which will entice many readers into the breaking of fire bleeding from Satan's depths.

In a very clever an interesting way, this collection has been crafted as the poets antagonise and and challenge the birth of their creations in this amazing work that encounters many important figures of history.

Get ready to trawl these pages with Satan, the Damned, Guy Fawkes, and Hell - you are in for an awakening!

The work explores all facets of emotion, some disturbing and requiring punishment; best not be tormented and yearning for compassion in this gruesome adult read.

Genius concept 5*****

Wayne says

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. - Mark Twain

You can always count on Mark Twain. What he doesn't mention is rains of fire flakes, hell horses, demons, devils, lawyers, and billions of the Damned, many of whom weren't exactly the nicest people in life.

Hell is an Equal Opportunity kind of place. Mess up, and you'll end up on Slab A being worked over by the Undertaker, who isn't the most pleasant chap. Really mess up and Satan will display your still living body parts for all to see, before sending you to the Undertaker.

The Damned are in Hell for punishment. And punished they will be, often by other of the Damned. King or beggar, Hell will be one Hell of a trip for all of them. A short trip in many cases. Back to the Undertaker, who sometimes makes minor mistakes, like putting your arms where your legs are supposed to go. You've got to pity the poor guy though, he's just been swamped since Guy Fawkes used a nuclear weapon on the Hall of Injustice.

This is the seventeenth book in the series, and no, you don't need to read the earlier books first. Janet Morris has done her usual incredible job of pulling together a group of talented writers, and sending them on a mission to help with the punishment.

You'll meet old friends, and new friends in Hell. Just don't turn your back on them if you have the 'Get Out of Hell Free Card!'

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And never enter Hell without your sword/spear/bow/pistol/nuclear weapon at hand and ready for use. Oh, no, you took the safety off and are bleeding to death. Let me relieve you of your money and gun, and say 'Hello to the Undertaker for me!'

T.C. Rypel says

Four stars only, for now, out of fairness resulting from the incomplete nature of this brief review...

Full disclosure: I've only been able to read Joe Bonadonna's "We the Furious" and Janet and Chris Morris' "Seven Against Hell" so far, but I was compelled to leave a comment due to the sporadic, distracted nature of my pleasure-reading these days. But I am impressed, and I didn't want to leave that initial impression unmarked. Ongoing impressions may be added later---what audacity, this guy flashes, eh?!

Call this...a "serialized review," if you will.

These two tales in POETS IN HELL are very different in tone and approach, which divergence provides a pair of dynamic gateways into the wildly inventive, shared-world "in Hell" series (this being the 17TH BOOK inspired by the fertile Janet Morris concept---!).

Unique, sometimes challenging, and mind-blowingly inventive---all these perceptions apply to this entire Morris-series creation involving eternal struggles in the Underworld that transcend simplistic notions like despair and and resignation to a final fate.

Oh, no, says this ambitious Morris series: Think ye that Hell is the bitter END to all thy strivings? that consignment to Hell might at least impart some..."repose" in surrender to everlasting torment? Think again, O ye who enter here---SURPRISE! There's SO much more to suffer and vie for, even in the grim Circles of the Pit. (Does the human spirit EVER quit aspiring toward ascendancy, even to relative status in misery?)

So many plates are kept spinning overhead (or rather, underworld) in this vast and varied tapestry of literary, historical and fictional characters interacting amidst Perdition's flames in a feverish (what other kind could there be, in Hell?) competition to curry favor, deceive, and otherwise self-aggrandize themselves (did you expect altruistic motivations, in HELL?!) in the Father of Lies' domain.

Every writer represented in this anthology (and the others) is forced to literally go through...well---HELL to fall within the parameters of the shared-world vision, and yet deliver something with a personal storytelling stamp (not to mention indulge themselves in some passionate manipulation of favorite characters).

Now that's DAMNED hard to do (sorry). And it appears that the several fantasy writers within the pages of the present volume go the extra mile, paving the road to Hell with their most earnest personal visions of eternal striving, passion and manipulation even in damnation.

The Morrises' "Seven Against Hell" is a potent dose of their usual finely wrought classicism, in tone, yielding a story of larger-than-life characters who are nonetheless very rooted in recognizable, soberingly human emotions and motivations. Bonadonna's "We the Furious" is a much different, wildly nostalgic and amusingly referential collision of incongruous characters (Frankenstein and his creation! Galatea and Gulliver! joining skillfully fleshed-out original characters---"Frankenstein" constructs whose "parts and stitching" kept me guessing) on a joint (and sometimes cross-purposed) mission that leads to surprising corners of Hell. Not to mention unexpected resolutions.

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There's nothing quite like this venerable, long-running, shared-world series, refreshed yet again with POETS IN HELL. I look forward to reading more.

J.P. Wilder says

The stories in this shared-world anthology were exquisitely unique, and filled with all the things I love.

When I first heard this title, I thought, what could possibly be dramatic or thrilling or frightening about poets in hell? I mean really? I had images of Sylvia Plath chasing someone down Hell’s new London streets with a hatchet, or Billy Collins reciting his famed contemporary poetry to me to a hellish backdrop filled with imps and succubi, until I fling myself headlong off the Santa Monica Pier. But, I respect so many of the authors that contributed to this work that I figured I had to take a read.

I was not disappointed. I should have known.

Every single story has a unique feel to it and every single author’s talents are exemplified in each individual tale. Yet, every single story has a certain consistency to it. I’ve read a lot of shared world stories before, and sometimes they can feel very structured, designed to limit the ability for the tale teller to upset the greater picture—stilted, even. But, these stories did not have that constrained feel to them at all. The one thing they did have in common is one of the traits I love the most: this anthology is dark.

And I love things dark.

The poets (and their supporting casts) were wickedly entertaining—I don’t think you have ever seen Sappho or Homer, or Shakespeare or Marlowe or Longfellow or Dante or any of the other poets in the book cast in this light. There they stand, side by side, upon Lucifer’s stage reciting prose for the fallen angel himself.

Personally, I was shocked to learn that Dante was in hell, given his staunch support of the papacy for much of his life—but there he was, bigger than life—and it was all too plausible. And Longfellow and Browning, along with a suitably western Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson engaged in a sort-of life-and-death poetry challenge (With just a little more at stake than The Voice or American Idol). And who knew that Napoleon and the Iron Duke would be working together in the dark afterlife of Perdition?

It was fantastic.

And yet, despite all of the larger than life characters, (great names, like Poe and Pound and Plato to name a few) and all of the unbelievable situations, the stories all maintained a commitment to the underlying hopelessness of hell and the darkness that must be part of the tableau for it to be engaging. It seemed to me entirely plausible that these great characters still strove against the hopelessness, held to the deep values and commitments to the traits that made them giants of their time. All (or most, anyway) of these characters were in their own way heroic, despite, or perhaps largely because of, their situations.

It also seemed to me that Heaven must be severely lacking in culture if none of these folks made the cut! But, I digress.

I recommend to anyone that enjoys dark fiction, anyone that enjoys shared-world fiction, and anyone that enjoys horror take a read of this anthology. I don’t think you can go wrong and I am sure you won’t be disappointed.

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Walter Rhein says

This is the first of the Hell books that I’ve read and it is a blast. I was a little nervous starting at number seventeen in the series, but let me assure you that this is a complete volume which you are able to enjoy on its own merits. The stories are all penned by different authors, but there is a grand continuity to each of them. There is certainly a set of rules that each writer is familiar with, and you see references to various common characters that make the book a cohesive unit. Every author was assigned a certain poet who makes an appearance in his or her story so Shakespeare, Coolige, Nietzsche, Li Po, Browning, etc., all appear in various stories. I think English Majors will find this collection especially delightful, and actually I’m surprised that it took 17 volumes to get to poets!

I was especially impressed by the consistency of quality between the stories. All the contributors of this volume are very talented adding their own special twist to the shared universe. Chris and Janet Morris start things off with a couple of tales that are especially lyrical. One of them involves a flayed Odysseus who is on a quest to retrieve his skin—a chilling image to be sure, but worthy of the epic tradition that birthed Odysseus.

I have to say that I enjoyed seeing Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Beowulf making appearances in this tomb as well. Also, although this novel is set in Hell, I wouldn’t call it a “terror” novel by any means. As can be predicted, there are some fairly gruesome scenes, and there are plenty of adult themes, but it’s not any more gory or graphic than a typical fantasy novel.

Many of the stories involve tormenting poets by forcing them to go and either judge or participate in “poetry slams” which is pretty funny. In fact, there is a lot of humor sprinkled throughout this book, which is somewhat surprising in a “Hell” themed anthology.

The more of a background you have in literature, the more fun this novel is going to be for you. It’s frankly delightful to see famous poets and writers depicted in a way that affectionately highlights their specific, identifiable quirks. You can tell that the contributors to “Poets in Hell” picked writers that they were especially fond of. This anthology is unique in that not only does it introduce you to some modern writers you might not have heard of before, it also presents you with some historical ones whose works you might be inclined to explore. This is the kind of book that I’d like to see more available in high school classrooms (haha, imagine that!), because it’s exactly the type of thing to pique the curiosity of 17-18 year olds. Too bad our world is too Hellish to allow functional education tools.

Do check out “Poets in Hell.” I’m off to go and read some of the earlier volumes.

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