If Piccirilli needs an introduction, you need a contusion.  He’s one of the most well known horror poets working today.  Outside of the genre, he might not be on everyone’s lips, but on the boards and chatrooms that true horrorlover’s inhabit, he’s legion.  He’s written over a dozen novels, hundreds of stories and won the Bram Stoker Award three times.

To skip the novels and story collections, since they get slightly more attention in places other than SpiderWords (and they’re disturbing and well-written, too), we’ll just hack and bite into two of the poetry collections that Pic has written, then give a nod to one of his least known but most interesting books.

Waiting My Turn To Go Under The Knife is a bloody, vicious and gleeful collection.  It’s personal and it’s insane.  The tone is as consistent as Student of Hell, a previous collection of Pic’s, and the poems tend to tell short, perverse narratives, but they’re slightly more anecdotal, as if Pic is the lead character in more of the stories.  The force of these poems comes from how they explore personal, or tangible, fears.  Made up or not, these are eerie happenings that, mostly, could actually happen.  An encounter with a streetwalker, a taxi ride to a cemetery, or the strange mental state of someone awaiting an operation, they’re spooky – but also authentic and gripping.

Jack Ketchum said it as, “They form a kind of autobiography-of-the-soul.  I've never said it before about a book of poetry – but it's a real page-turner."  And he’s right, this collection is fast-paced and thrilling.

A Student of Hell is separate from Waiting My Turn To Go Under The Knife because the poems aren’t quite as personal.  They’re, despite many similarities, a bit less tied to reality as we think we know it.  They’re just as blood-slicked, but a bit more haunted by ghosts or the supernatural.  Witchcraft, which at one moment in Knife is mocked (partially because the woman offering said craft is in a muumuu at a supermarket at 3 a.m.), is slightly more frightening in A Student of Hell.  Everyday events still lead to the bloody “aha moments,” but Hell is perhaps a bit grimmer, while Knife, even if only because it’s vaster and more comprehensive, has satirical bits ground up and mixed in with the profound qualities.

They’re both worth getting.  Even for the non-poet.  Not because Pic’s a non-poet.  He’s utterly gifted.  But these works cross over; they’re compressed stories.

And Welcome to Hell: A Working Guide for the Beginning Writer deserves mention too.  Also from Fairwood Press (who published Knife), Welcome to Hell is an anecdotal look into Piccirilli’s life and writing process that happens to serve as a wonderful tool for any fledgling writer.  Oddly, since he’s so acclaimed, this may be the Piccirilli book that should break out into the mainstream.  In a mere forty to fifty pages (depending on whether you count the signature page and the helpful addresses), Piccirilli lays out, in an ultra-accessible almost stream-of-consciousness style, answers to all the silly questions that newbie writers like to ask.

Without reservation, Waiting My Turn To Go Under The Knife, is an ideal purchase for a mainstream horror novel fan who wants to sample poetry.  A Student of Hell is slightly more valuable to someone who wants to be haunted by a shakier narrator and hints toward a darker world.  And Welcome to Hell is ideal for anyone who wants to write any kind of fiction, even if it’s cheesy romances with Fabio on the cover.

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