Dragons! They fly, they love shiny things, and apparently they love nose boops. There really is no reason not to love dragons, truth be told. Wee dragon-lovers are deep in our feelings during this long, hot House of the Dragon summer—from the heroic resolve and bravery of our beloved Queen Who Never Was, to Baela and Moondancer’s fierceness, to the terrifying spectacle of dragons fighting each other for human reasons—and what better way to sink into that space than with poetry.
Here are five dragon poems about those giant, scaly nuclear bombs who need affection because we can never, ever have enough dragons.
“Dragonslayer” by Priya Chand
First, let’s cut straight to the quick with this one. Chand gives us a tale of a knight who boasts of winning a princess’s hand with no forethought about never being invited to take up such a quest.
“I have done it,” the knight exclaimed to the princess, regaling her with his tale of dragon slaying and how he loosed his spear and “launched it true.” In all his arrogant glory-seeking, she interjects the truth of the story. “Enough,” she tells him, for he came unasked to her mountain, ruining her woods, killing her animals, and, worst of all, destroying their beloved dragon. The knight grew furious, how dare she not recognize his bravery, his courage, or how he risked his life. Too blinded by his own worth, he saw heroic acts where she saw destruction and pride run amuck.
Threaded through the poem, though, is an unrelenting visual of a dead dragon no one is going to clean up, so read this one with one part sadness, one part rage.
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Dragon” by Mari Ness
Not quite melancholy, this poem gives us thirteen ways to look at a dragon who flies and burns. A nod to Wallace Stevens “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” Ness shows us a decidedly different take as the closing of the poem ends with the dragon atop the quiet mountain after burning things to ash. The speaker is of different minds when it comes to dragons, knowing that often they are but a “small part of the calamity” that can befall a story.
“The shadow of the dragon” found on the land, “crossed it, to and fro,” leading to the inevitable “it was going to ash.” The dragon, though, having finished its tasks, watched “on the quiet mountain,” closes the poem and answers the question from Stanza V of not knowing which part to prefer: bards telling the tale, the weeping audience, “[t}he dragon singing,” or the part just after. The content dragon, the after, that is the part we love so much.
“Dragon Questionnaire” by Leslie Wheeler
My favorite pun of all time is “when is a door not a door?” with the answer being the obviously hilarious “when it’s ajar!” There is no pun in this poem, but it does ask the question, “when is a woman not a woman?”
When she’s a dragon, of course.
Wheeler plays with form and structure in a way that lends itself to the weight of the meaning of the poem, a reminder of the truly dangerous beings hence the content warning at the beginning. The poem, a questionnaire, requires red ink and the ability to suppress thoughts about racism, sexism, climate change, goes on to determine whether or not you are easily suppressed or going to be a problem. The first statement sets up for us how important it is to revel in our dragon tendencies by answering if rage is unacceptable or if it is useful to flying (obvious answer is its usefulness when flying).
Questions 3 and 6, however, offer up the same statement, but it is obvious that the meanings are taken completely differently. “Refugee children should not be caged at U.S. borders” from question 3 tells us that marking the first statement means refugee children shouldn’t be at the border to begin with (their parents shouldn’t have attempted to immigrate) and the second answer shows that they shouldn’t be caged. The first statement to question 6 asserts that “Violence is bad,” implying that dragons are violent and, therefore, bad. The answer to this, “Yes, very bad” implies that the violence done against dragons (and other underrepresented people) is what’s bad.
It is clearly better to be a dragon (likely even the herpetologist would agree).
“Your Visiting Dragon” by Devan Barlow
To swath ourselves in sadness at dying dragons is one thing, but this poem provides a salve for us. Your visiting dragon needs a warm fire and soft blankets to be enticed to stay and though they very well may steal your spoons and salt shakers, they will leave them behind. Fear not, or rather cry not, for if you provide a cozy enough place for them, they may return next season.
First, let’s talk about how this poem ensnares us completely at the opening because it tells us that “should a dragon linger” at our “hummingbird feeder”—wait, wait, wait a dragon-breathing minute! Should a dragon LINGER?! This was not a thing I thought possible, but I’ve never had a hummingbird feeder and now I know exactly what I’m missing. Also, apparently, I need plenty of blankets, animals intact (dragons don’t mind the bones, you know), and a fireplace.
That is much easier than learning High Valyrian and constructing a dragon pit. Overall, a useful poem for how to attract a dragon to share your hearth and home during the cold winter months. We have some time to prepare, so memorize this poem asap.
“What the Dragon Said: A Love Story” by Catherynne Valente
This poem does warn you about the risks of reading to its closing, but as with everything dragon-related, we aren’t going to listen (we’ve all seen the nose boops and that is encouragement enough to love them). A dragon telling its tale about need and desire and fire and even love, a perfect way to end our five poem measure about dragons because, in the end, it’s what humans do to dragons that makes them the most tragic of all.
Like “The Little Matchgirl,” we are watching the demise of someone as we read (yes, dragons are someones, too). By the time we realize this in the poem, it is too late and too compelling to turn back and so like a quest taken up by a knight surprised at the amount walking he must do, we, too, must push on towards the forgiveness in the dragon who tells we’ll never “fix / that line” that their fate is sealed from the moment we walked “into a dragon’s lair” at the open.
But, oh the middle! A dragon hungry for a life they see laid out as a table, wanting to consume everything, love everything, as big as a galaxy, with everyone safe inside their stomach, fed and warm and never having to work again. They have us pegged, you see, they know how badly we want, how much we need, how horrible our appetite is to consume everything; we aren’t different, not really, just that their destruction is labeled bad while ours has qualifiers. And, anyway, “It’s not nihilism / if there’s really no point to anything.”
Except the dragon has depths of forgiveness we lack and so we write them and read them and dream about them over and over again, our hunger for dragon and stories overpowering even us.
