Iโm a small-time creator; Iโm no Stephen King, or Bloody Disgusting, or Jamie Lee Curtis. So I find it comforting to go to smaller events and find goodies that normally wouldnโt see a worldwide release. Enter a book booth at the annual Scares That Care Charity Weekend in Williamsburg, VA, where I came across a red and yellow book with an old-timey man sporting a bowler cap on the cover. There, I was told about a lady-author with an absurd curiosity for turn-of-the-century murders, enough to write an entire collection of poems about them. The bright red book was The Devilโs Dreamland, Poetry inspired by H. H. Holmes, written beautifully by author Sara Tantlinger, an author whoโs one-time reader is now a lifelong fan.
The Devilโs Dreamland is a collection of poems meant to fill our minds with images of blood and uncanny evil, all surrounded by the majesty of the 1893 Worldโs Fair in the โWhite Cityโ of Chicago, Illinois. For those of you not familiar with Holmes, he was a conartist who constructed the infamous โMurder Castleโ where he would kill his victims and sell their remains to medical facilities. Others he would kill after convincing them to sign over deeds to their houses and fortunes, only to collect large sums of money from their life insurance plans. All of this was done during the historic 1893 Worldโs Fair, making unsuspecting lone travelers plentiful, easily filling the rooms of his castle.
Personally Iโm a fan of rhyming poems, but Iโve gained a liking towards Tantlingerโs prose. They roll off the tongue easily and are understandable on a first read-through, so much so that The Devilโs Dreamland only took me about a day to leisurely read. It was also hugely entertaining! Somehow, reading about viscera and decomposition โhitโs differentโ than seeing it on a screen; itโs almost alluring. The way Tantlinger describes these scenes puts your mind into a sort of trance, just as itโs said Holmesโ astonishingly blue eyes did. You donโt feel gross or dirty, just extremely interestedโฆ again, like the many poems about Holmesโ fascination with death creeping over a body.
These poems arenโt necessarily true accounts of Holmesโ crimes, they’re inspired by them. So while some poems do give details that really happened, like the various entries about his wives, others are just imaginings of what could have happened, what others could have thought, or what he thought himself. โThe First Wife: Claraโ is one of my favorites, and a mix of both. Iโve found little about Claraโs thoughts during her marriage to Holmes and after his arrest, so we can only speculate what truly happened all that time. But what we do know, as mentioned in this poem, that her life with him wasnโt good, and that she could have easily become one of his victims.
… when you redefine love on your own terms
you can redefine your life
because at least, and you will learn
years from now,
at least he leaves you alive
at least he leaves you alive
Sara Tantlinger, “The First Wife: Clara,” The Devil’s Dreamland: Poetry Inspired by H.H. Holmes
The Devilโs Dreamland is a fun, quick read. Easily digestible but vile enough to let you peer into the depths of one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. Sara Tantlinger fully captured the essence of crime in the dawn of a new century with enthralling language that keeps pages turning quicker than Holmesโ cauldrons of lye stripping flesh from a corpse. With this book alone, Tantlinger proves herself a master of horror writing without it seeming horrible to begin with, and Iโd gladly use this as an entry point for someone looking to get into the genre without being scared away.
