With this more dark & dreary time of year, I have taken it as the opportunity to page homage to whom was (IMO) one of the most profound people to ever live.
Poe dug deeper than deep & put into words the most raw forms of human psyche, emotion, spirituality, intellect, discovery, depiction, & insight. From the all-laid-out-on-the-table, undressed, untamed, winding roads of human exploration in his stories, to the insurmountable depth of this man's metaphorical sense, neatly wrapped up into the alluring & exciting lil packages that were his poems.
No need to delve into The Raven here. I could recite it from memory as a kid, and I think it's incredibly bandwagon that someone always has to get all Raven up in this bitch, wherever this bitch may be.
I do try here & there, every once in a great while, to turn others onto his different works. Reading his poetry is a great teacher to meditate on in grasping the art of the language that is.
In "The Poetic Principle" Poe explains:
"I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.
I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags- fails- a revulsion ensues- and then the poem is, in effect and in fact, no longer such."
And these snippets, these gems, pierce & tantalize the very soul with a love & understanding of the language. To a degree of nearly dumbfounded intoxication. an inexplicable awe, a beauty you feel blow through you like a breeze, a fire in the soul - A candle is lit, the burning inferno of the human essence, transformed to a primitive eloquence we call poetry.
A homage to the heart of Poe, with golden quotes.
Take this kiss upon the brow!
and in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
_________________
Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine-
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain & a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits & flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
A dream to bright to last!
Ah, starry hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the future cries "On! on!"-but o'er the Past
My spirit hovering lies mute, motionless, aghast.
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams-
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams!
________________
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 winged seraphs of 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 highborn kinsman 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 the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
And here is where I absolutely urge iPhone users & Poe lovers to get this, completely free. More than any of my paper books ever contained & therefore one hell of a gem. Complete collection right in your palm, & they ain't pullin' your leg this time.....
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-complete-edgar-allan-poe/id370950927?mt=8
