by MarieAnn C. Raguso, PhD

Allegories of Beauty & Violence is a Gothic Romance poetry collection that entwines mythology, folklore, and modern darkness into a haunting tapestry of love, death, and transformation. Each poem reveals how beauty is never free from its shadow—violence—whether in the form of Persephone’s pomegranate pact, a vampiric seduction, or the unrelenting grief of lovers torn across time and mortality.

Raguso draws from the mythic—Hades, Medusa, Atropos, the Strigoi—to reimagine ancient archetypes as contemporary elegies of flesh, desire, and ruin. The collection moves between whispered intimacy and cosmic scale, juxtaposing carnal ecstasy with existential dread, where the erotic collides with the macabre. Themes of obsession, resurrection, and forbidden longing thread throughout, offering readers an unsettling beauty that lingers like a dream half-remembered.

Written in a voice that is visceral, lyrical, and unflinching, these poems invite the reader into a world where gothic romanticism is both sanctuary and snare. The collection does not simply retell myths or horror tropes—it transforms them into living allegories, exploring how love and violence are inseparably bound in human and supernatural experience. Allegories of Beauty & Violence seduces with its dark allure, challenges with its intensity, and rewards with its layered symbolism. It is a collection that unsettles as much as it enchants—an offering to horror poetry that is as intoxicating as it is inexorable.