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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
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January 19, 2003
Welcome to my nightmare
Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809. This would be his 194th birthday. Of course he famously died pretty much literally face down in the gutter. He was a tortured soul with a rough row to hoe, and problems with booze and dope.
He was, however, one of the top ten or so best users of the written English language ever. He just flat had the skills to pay the bills. He pretty much invented the modern detective story. He wrote exceptionally good, lucid poetry.
He is probably best remembered for some horror short stories, such as "The Telltale Heart" and the supernatural intricacies of "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Masque of the Red Death." Stephen King has done some good work, but Poe makes him look like a P-U-N-K. Poe was, among other things, the best fulfillment of a literary gothic tradition. Any little poser goth kids ought to be studying Poe. He is the great role model.
In his life of struggles, Poe was certainly one of the most morbid writers ever to write major work in all of the English language. Perhaps making the point most succintly would come by quoting the whole of one of his most famous poems:
Annabel Lee.
By Edgar A. Poe.
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee; �
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love �
I and my Annabel Lee �
With a love that the wing�d seraphs in Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre,
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me �
Yes! � that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we �
Of many far wiser than we �
And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: �
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: �
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling � my darling � my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea �
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Finally, there is the Poe grave schtick. Poe is buried in the Old Western Burial Ground in Baltimore, Maryland. Every January 19, Poe's birthday, for more than fifty years a man dressed in black and fedora has left cognac accompanied by three red roses on Poe's grave. I can appreciate wanting to memorialize him, but methinks that's just a bit much. It seems a little kitschy gay to me, frankly. Just a tad cheap and tacky for my taste.
posted by Al at 1/19/2003 02:53:00 AM
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