Horror Poetry Chapter 1: The Poet's Violent Eye

How horrific imagery in literature is distinct from imagery in film

Right to left: Georgia O'Keefe "Summer Days" (1936); Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without A Face) Georges Franju (1960)

The notable names in horror films, like David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Michael Powell, and Alfred Hitchcock,  recognize that, as a genre, horror is irresistibly beautiful. Is Percy Bysshe Shelley right, that “poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted”? George Franju’s film Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face, 1959)  flirts with the paradox of Freud’s pleasure principle and Jacques Lacan’s jouissance.  Set in post-WWII Europe,