KNOW YOUR POE: The Life of Poe? . . . OH, NO!

(In my recent quest to find a decent or even a complete biography of Poe, I was disappointed - twice. I was upset enough to do something I would not normally do - write and post a book review, FOR FREE. For, no matter what people assume, I was paid for my reviewing, and had a modest but steady income as a writer for more than thirty years. In this case, I was upset and disappointed enough to post a couple of freebies on Amazon.)

The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science 

by John Tresch

1.0 out of 5 stars

This is not about Poe at all!

This is NOT a true biography of Poe at all, only a dull synopsis of his life events and some of his stories (with spoilers galore for people who have not read them all). The author strains to connect Poe to "science" (a tenuous connection at best), and recounts in page after page the “discoveries” of lesser scientists, one of whom made “astonishing” discoveries that it turned out had ALREADY been discovered a year earlier by someone else! 

He forces his thesis into the narrative like someone trying to make a jigsaw puzzle with pieces that do not fit. Finally it became so tedious that I told myself I'd skip any passages that WEREN'T about Poe, and several times had to skip four or five or SIX pages, as it turned out Poe had no connection to these "scientists" and their amazing "discoveries" at all. At one point he is commissioned to write a textbook about shells, and a few people read it and he made all of $50.00. 

But the narrative stops and starts, derailed by all these long science detours, and the writing style is unengaging – I’ve read textbooks which were more interesting than this. And after reading it, I still know virtually nothing about Poe and his life, relationships, and the inner man. When he marries his 13-year-old first cousin (and she takes up maybe one small paragraph, then drops out of sight), his only remark is that since other biographers have commented on it extensively, he will not (!!). So he is also lazy, letting other biographers write the material for him, quoting their ideas as if they are gospel truth - meaning he has nothing new to bring to the table. 

In between the long drones about science, he will drop things such as that he and his aunt and wife are starving to death and living on bread and molasses, even though he always seems to be gainfully employed. I was never clear as to how this money was drained away, and there was no enlightenment to be found here. Wasn't he a compulsive gambler? I'm not sure, because it isn't mentioned here at all! But not only was he gainfully employed virtually all his adult life, he was employed in his own field as a literary critic and editor of his own magazine. 

Thus he was quite well-known and even well-respected as an author, a poet and a literary critic: a very fortunate situation for someone living on bread and molasses! His interest in “science” was peripheral at best, and largely in the realm of the speculative and the mystical, actually running counter to real science. I can’t return it, though I tried to, because – the “window of return is closed” – which I have never seen before! Means I can’t unload it and get my $25-some back. 

This is NOT about Poe, and we have no sense at all of the man, his convoluted relationships, or why he was so chronically destitute. I read in a review about an early engagement to a woman, which I had to look up in the index because I did not remember even seeing it, and found, once again, her name mentioned exactly twice, with NO EXPLANATION and nothing at all about their romance. Period. So I am shelving it, but only because I can’t return it.

Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance

by Kenneth Silverman

3.0 out of 5 stars

Rich in detail, but a hard slog

This is the SECOND time I've been disappointed by a Poe biography. The first one (The Reason for the Darkness of the Night) tried to tie him to the scientific discoveries of his time - and didn't, because there was no real connection. Silverman's bio is detailed to the point of agony, but mostly recounts in microscopic detail his work as a magazine writer, editor and critic, which he seems to think took up far more of his time and energy than writing his famous tales and poems. 

But what was truly dismaying was the fact I just could not get a good sense of Poe the man. His life could be as creepy and disturbing as his stories, in that he married a blood relative who was basically a little girl, lived with his aunt who comes across as unpaid help, and was a shameless opportunist and even a hypocrite, savagely criticizing the noted authors of the day, then sucking up to those same authors for writing opportunities and even money. 

The fact that Poe was constantly broke is also baffling: surely he was gainfully employed through most of his life, and in his own field of literature - so where did all the money go? Silverman does not explain it. His mental illness and alcoholism were tremendous obstacles, though Silverman does not get around to writing about them in detail until about mid-book.

The main fault of this bio is that he spends too little time on Poe's complex, contradictory personality, his spirituality, his sexuality, and all those deeper traits that make a biographical subject come alive. Poe worked, drank, and swindled people, often plagiarizing writers while railing against OTHER writers who did the same thing. After all this, I find there really isn't much that I like about Poe, but I am reading this mainly as a biographical introduction to a massive tome I bought featuring all his tales and poems. 

I have read enough Poe to realize he was brilliant, subtle, mercurial, sly, and undoubtedly a genius - in his work. As a person, he was pretty dreadful. Though his life was cut short, It truly amazes me he managed to live for forty years. It's hard to determine just what Silverman thought of his subject, and by mid-book I got the distinct impression he wished he hadn't committed himself to writing this. The hard-slog feeling is difficult to push past, and the sense of "homework assignment" gives the narrative a labored quality. 

Worst of all, his writing style is so ponderous that I often had to go back and read sentences twice to figure out just what he meant. "Where's the verb?" This should NEVER happen in ANY book! Do anything, but don't bore or confuse me. Overall, it's a doorstop, and has helped me get to sleep on many a midnight dreary, which I hope I will not be able to say about Poe's complete works when I finally get to them.

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KNOW YOUR POE: The Happiest Day

 

The Happiest Day

The happiest day–the happiest hour
My sear'd and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;
But they have vanish'd long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been–
But let them pass.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?
Another brow may even inherit
The venom thou hast pour'd on me
Be still, my spirit!

The happiest day–the happiest hour
Mine eyes shall see–have ever seen,
The brightest glance of pride and power,
I feel–have been:

But were that hope of pride and power
Now offer'd with the pain
Even then I felt–that brightest hour
I would not live again:

For on its wing was dark alloy,
And, as it flutter'd–fell
An essence–powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.

I will confess right now that I don't know a lot of Poe's poe-etry, and to dip into it is difficult, for it's melancholy and dense and written in that Victorian way, full of morbid verbal bric-a-brac and swirling emotional effluvia. So I cast around for something a bit lighter. Ah! This must be it, The Happiest Day! Even a morose devil like Poe must have had a little fun, even though it's said he never had sex with his wife, and perhaps not with anyone. Even his biographers don't know for sure, and the secret died with him. But when I found this poem and realized it was relatively short, I thought, aha, here's one I can analyze line-by-line without busting my brain or bursting into tears.

Wrong. This guy just never lightens up.

Analyzing poetry is an awful thing, really, because it should mean exactly what it means to the reader. If it's really good, the poem reads you. It pulls uncomfortable stuff out of you, the stuff we shove aside in order to get through the day and deal with its noise and tussle. Whilst all this dark and slimy stuff lurks beneath.

So I will let this poem read me. It seems to be saying - and here I am reminded of Oscar Levant's statement, "Happiness isn't something you experience, it's something you remember" - that what we call happiness is so evanescent that it melts and evaporates even as we experience it. The poet, who was maybe 22 when he wrote this, feels his life has already peaked and it's all a downward slide from here on in (though little did he know he'd only make it to forty).

It's a short poem, after all, certainly short for for Poe - but he packs a lot into it, or rather sneaks it in. Two weighty words repeat almost as alarmingly as those infernal "bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells": "pride" and "power":

The happiest day–the happiest hour
My sear'd and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.

Is the poet in some sort of disgrace here? Or has he missed out on something? "The highest hope of pride and power" - this isn't about happiness at all, but about position, worldly position! Loftiness, almost. And because he fell off his high horse, he's whimpering about it: "sear'd and blighted" seems to imply some sort of assault from the outside, a burn, a rotting on the vine, which is a vastly different thing from internally-generated grief.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;

But they have vanish'd long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been–
But let them pass.

Here we get a clue. We get a clue what this guy is really all about. What he dreamed about as a youth. What he hoped for. Longed for. And it's not a pretty picture. He argues with himself for a moment, as if somewhat incredulous: Power? Are you sure that's what did it for me? Then (after using the almost supernatural term "vanished" to describe the loss) he dismisses the whole thing, though there are several more stanzas to come.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?

Another brow may even inherit
The venom thou hast pour'd on me
Be still, my spirit!

Now here's a mysterious couple of lines: "Another brow may even inherit/The venom thou hast pour'd on me". Who is this "other", and is "inherit" to be taken literally? And how can pride - whom I assume he is addressing rhetorically - pour venom on someone? Or perhaps it's the loss of pride?  Again, it's the external assault, the snakebite from the bluff. "Be still, my spirit!" may not have been quite as histrionic then as now, but it's still an obvious play for sympathy.

The happiest day–the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see–have ever seen,
The brightest glance of pride and power,
I feel–have been:

"The brightest glance of pride and power" - but now we begin to see the vanity at the core. Bright glances, ah, those too must come from the outside - glances of approval, we must assume. Or is the "glance of pride and power" really his own? Whichever it is, it's revealing that this is the thing that made him happiest - a happiness he is certain will never come again.

Or does he not deserve to be happy?

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offer'd with the pain
Even then I felt–that brightest hour
I would not live again:

Now is he really telling us here that, given the chance to relive it,  he would turn away the brightest moment of his life? Is this sour grapes - who needs this, anyway? - or is he so far into his own self-pity that he actively chooses pain over pleasure? 

But he's not saying that at all.  He is saying "the HOPE of pride and power" - and a hope isn't the same thing at all, it's just a desire, unfulfilled. Something that was never real to begin with. A fantasy. 

And then he tells us - if I'm digging anything real out of this at all - he tells us he wouldn't want to experience that hope again because he KNOWS it would be followed by some awful, shot-sparrow, plummeting despair. This is some sort of definition of soul-destroying melancholia.

For on its wing was dark alloy,
And, as it flutter'd–fell
An essence–powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.

I can't help but feel, as this densely-written, enigmatic thing comes to a screeching close, that it's really about the old Biblical warning, "Pride goeth before a fall". Certainly the image of the falling bird seems to imply that all his lusting and yearning for power and approval will eventually bring about his downfall. I don't quite get the "alloy", which is a sort of metallic reference that does not fit with shot sparrows or ravens or whatever-it-is (though it is a dandy rhyme with "destroy"). Alloy seems to indicate two elements fusing together. Pride and power? Poe and status, perhaps literary status? Is this alloy the "essence" which is so powerful (oops, that's ironic - power IS the problem) to destroy? It's unclear if the alloy is an external element this time, or something inextricably bound up with his own heart. Which would mean that the poet has, in contemporary terms, sold out. 

But the kicker is that last line. "A soul that knew it well" - knew what, the shallowness of power trips and pride, of drawing-room debate over which poet has scored the most literary  points (or pale waxen virgins gently expiring on velvet divans)? Has he been playing worldly games all along, and being utterly seduced by them? Is he afraid to re-enter the Eden of his youth, because he knows damned well he'll just be thrown out of there again?

Oh, not another original sin poem! Anything but that!

POST-BLOG NOTE. I was amazed but not surprised, in trying to find tasty images of Poe, that I kept coming up with pictures of John Astin, the actor who portrayed Gomez Addams in The Addams Family. It seems he has played Poe on the Broadway stage, and my goodness, they wouldn't need to put much makeup on him! He's a dead ringer for the man (except too jolly by half).  I think Astin must be, oh, God in heaven, 90 years old by now if he's still around, and Poe expired at 40. His Gomez was so wacky and vibrant that it's hard to imagine he could plumb such scary depths. But the resemblance goes far beyond his physical appearance. There's something haunted and hunted in those sad and weary eyes. 

So maybe it was type-casting, after all.

KNOW YOUR POE: The Raven

 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore –

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door –

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door –

Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore –

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore –

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,

"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door –

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; –

This it is and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you" – here I opened wide the door; –

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" –

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore –

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; –

'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door –

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door –

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore –

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning – little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door –

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing further then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered –

Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before –

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

Then the bird said "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore –

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of 'Never – nevermore.'"

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore –

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee – by these angels he hath sent thee

Respite – respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore;

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil! –

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted –

On this home by Horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore –

Is there – is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil – prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore –

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore –

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

 

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting –

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted – nevermore!

THE AFTERMATH. Never explain yourself! says the poet. All right then, I will. My dalliance with Poe is an ongoing, or at least recurrent thing, and who knows if it will lead to any conclusions. I certainly will NOT be writing any books about him. I have found a superb site hosted by the Poe Society of Baltimore (I have provided a link at the end of this post), and I hope to creep and crawl around in it in the coming days. It has simply everything - remarkably complete, even down to what his voice sounded like ("melodious", as poets' voices were often described, with a touch of Southern accent, the kind we hear in the polished and well-moneyed.  And in spite of dire poverty, he always affected a slightly shabby gentility.)

But this is my Poe moment. Having strung together a crazy assortment of subconscious images (and some people are SO annoyed at the lack of one-on-one or sequential significance to these, as I prefer to dredge them up from the depths of the Land of Odd), yes, yes, having done ALL that - yes, done all that - well - well - I bought a cask of amontillado, and. . . and. . .

Actually, I went for a walk. Sasamat Lake, a gorgeous place where I love walking, because the winding trail is right up against the shore, so close you can almost dip your toe in. There's a white sandy beach, and breeze, and many geese with goslings (we counted 18 babies last time, and by now they were almost as big as chickens and looking weirdly ostrichlike). We were delighted to see them promenade again, the adults with stiff necks and nodding heads which seemed to say, eloquently, "Get lost, you humans, you're bothering me."

But it wasn't that.

Wasn't. That. At all.

When we arrived, just as we walked toward the white sands, we heard a - squawk.

An - AWWKK.

An - AWWWHHKKK!

This was a primal, even prehistoric sound, and soon it was joined by another voice even more evil and squawky, and then a third, and a fourth, and - God, how many were there?

"Ravens," I said to Bill. "It's ravens, and they're completely insane."

These ravens, at least four of them, or perhaps five or six, or even more, were not happy campers. The croaky squawks just escalated in frequency and volume until I thought I was in a Hitchcock movie. The resonance of their croaky Nevermore-ish throats just richochets and bounces off trees and rocks. This couldn't have been a good situation. Were they defending their territory? Nesting? Just plain ticked off?  I could see them wheeling in the sky, looking vaguely vulturelike above the treetops, while some of them hunched blackly in the branches.

The squawking and awwhhk-ing went on and on, until we outwalked it on the trail. Still there was an echo behind us, crows on steroids, murderous birds whose deep-throated squawks made crow-cawing seem melodious. I had the thought: a murder of crows, yes, but ravens - ?

At any rate, in light of my Poe-ish mood, it did seem like serendipity, or at least synchronicity, if only of a darkish shade.

I have not had time nor energy to analyze The Raven - God, what an undertaking, if I may use such an expression! And I hear there are Poe scholars who make it their life's work to sift out the meaning of all this macabre stuff. But I did notice some dark humor in it, lines that others don't seem to have noticed (humor? In Poe?).

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore –

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; –

'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

To me, this verse, if not ALL the verses, has the feeling of a black ditty, a rhyme and rhythm scheme that is almost fun. "Surely THAT is. . . at my window LATT-ice. . . what there-AT is. . ." He's having us on here, and he knows it. It sounds like a patter song from Gilbert and Sullivan, perhaps "I am the very model of a modern Major-General". 

And thinking the bird's name is Nevermore - why, that's nothing but an early version of "who's on second, what's on third"!

Surely Poe was one of the strangest men, who wrote one of the strangest poems, at the strangest time. For The Raven, which ran in an American newspaper, he was paid $17.00, not enough to keep him in amontillado for a week. Sometimes he was destitute enough to break up and burn his chairs for warmth in the winter - can't you see it? Poe always having to stand up? No wonder he looked so desperate!

But for him, this crow on steroids is an appropriate companion. The ideal Poe pet.  AWKKKKHH!

*Collective nouns for the corvids varies. 

A parliament of ravens is a reference to the robes the members of British parliament wear. 

An unkindness of ravens is another collective used because the birds are known to taunt and torment other predators. They will work together to steal prey and drive off raptors or dogs in the raven's territory. As in Poe's poem, ravens have an ominous image

A constable of ravens is what the roosting birds that live in the Tower of London are called. 

A conspiracy of ravens refers to their low rough group muttering. Ravens have a range of vocalizations that sound like undecipherable talk. 

(To that, I have nothing to add.)

Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore

General information about Poe

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KNOW YOUR POE: The Bells

PREFACE. I'm in yet another Poe phase, and so far it's pretty harrowing. I've chopped my way through two biographies, sending one back to Amazon because it was so godawful. The other one missed the boat on many things, most glaringly not giving ANY interpretation whatsoever on the deep mystery of his death. He just recounted it, without even mentioning the myriad theories about what exactly happened to him. So much of it is dry, detailed, straight reporting based on "what we know" (mainly Poe's letters, which are often 15 pages long and profoundly melodramatic, with every second word underlined). There is no doubt he was a crazy person, maybe the most bipolar historic figure of all time, deeply alcoholic, tortured, and often not very honest or trustworthy. But I also ordered a TOME, a big thick hardcover (made in China) meant to look like an ancient volume: COMPLETE TALES AND POEMS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. I haven't even cracked that one yet, as I am letting the biographical details of his life sink in. At any rate, I ran this series eight or so years ago, and if I don't remember it, neither will my readers! Enjoy.

Hello, and welcome to a new series entitled Know your Poe. (a. k. a. Poe Corner). Though I plan to run through everything Poe ever croaked, yelled or hiccupped, we'll start with an easy one, a poem so shot through with unspeakable horror that it makes The Raven sound like a Beach Boys song. Little Deuce Coupe, perhaps.

Why am I doing this? Because it intrigues me that there are no apparent degrees of separation between Poe and a similar literary legend, Jerry Lee Lewis. Both married their 13-year-old cousins, a move that today might raise a few eyebrows. Wikipedia makes this comment:

Debate has raged regarding how unusual this pairing was based on the couple's age and blood relationship. Noted Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn argues it was not particularly unusual, nor was Poe's nicknaming his wife "Sissy" or "Sis". Another Poe biographer, Kenneth Silverman, contends that though their first-cousin marriage was not unusual, her young age was. It has been suggested that Clemm and Poe had a relationship more like that between brother and sister than between husband and wife.



Yeah, OK, but. How many brothers and sisters are married? There's just no way you can make this turn out right.

From the demented photographic portraits to the gruesome short stories in which people are walled up inside catacombs, to the death at age 40 from God-knows-what-but-probably-alcohol, Poe evolved into legend and now belongs to all of us. He's the patron saint of tortured souls, people left to die in the abyss. Never was abandonment portrayed like this, in a way that fascinates us even as we shrink back and shudder. I felt a visceral stab when reading that he lost both his parents in infancy and was "taken in" by a couple who never formally adopted him, thus leaving him feeling like a permanent charity case. I can just hear them saying to him (and he likely really did hear this, as did many a literary legend): "Edgar, dear chap, do give up this poetry nonsense and make something of yourself."



Poe is part of pop culture as well as literature, and his crossover with Gomez Addams is obvious. If Poe had been happy, he would have been Gomez Addams. He would have had a more normal, wholesome marriage to someone like Morticia. But it was not to be, and at age forty, the poor sod (speaking of ravens) croaked.

Eons ago, I think in my teens, I found The Bells in an anthology somewhere, and a girl friend and I took turns reading it to each other (yes, I was like that, even back then). The locked-in rhyme and rhythm scheme can be headache-inducing and oppressive, but it was the format of the times, before Walt Whitman came along and blew everything apart. In rereading The Raven, a dense, thick, suffocating poem full of rustling purple curtains and velvet divans, I found some lines that were welded into my brain, that in fact were (unconsciously) a part of me:

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'



I didn't catch up with that "balm in Gilead" reference until much later, until I stood up and sang it in church:

"There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul."

Sin-sick? I wonder if marrying your thirteen-year-old cousin counts as "sin". By my standards, it certainly is sick, though Poe biographers hasten to assure us that it was "normal" for the times. But I get the feeling she spent most of her short life chronically ill, gently expiring on his purple velvet divan.



Never mind, we're here to analyze The Bells, which to my mind is even more Hitchcockian than The Raven, and certainly more bizarre. I was going to count how many times "bells" appears in this poem, but gave up after 27 or so. Never have I seen so much repetition in any work of literature, making me wonder if Poe's brain was (as we used to say) like a broken record.

And here's a charming little tidbit, which explains several phrases still in common use:

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people so they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave.
When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside. They realized they had been burying people alive, so they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.

Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered "a dead ringer".



The Bells

HEAR the sledges with the bells,
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.



Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!



Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!



Hear the loud alarum bells,
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now—now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!



How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,—
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells,
Of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!



Hear the tolling of the bells,
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people—ah, the people,
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone—
They are neither man nor woman,
They are neither brute nor human,
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A pæan from the bells;



And his merry bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells,
And he dances, and he yells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells,
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells—
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Edgar Allan Poe. 1809–1849

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When you're in the Little Land. . .

 

When you're in the Little Land
You watch the wee folk play,
You see them through a game or two,
You come out old and gray.

When you're in the Little Land
They fill your hands with gold,
You think you stay for just a day,
You come out bent and old.



Dead leaves in your pockets
O my enchanted, have a care
Run, run from the little folk
Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets
And snowflakes in your hair



Lights shine in the Little Land
From diamonds on the wall,
But when you're back on the brown hill side
It's cold pebbles after all.



Music in the little land
Makes the heart rejoice.
It charms your ear so you can not hear
The sound of your true love’s voice

Dead leaves in your pockets
O my enchanted, have a care
Run, run from the little folk
Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets
And snowflakes in your hair



When you’re in the Little Land
You watch the wee folk play,
You see them through a game or two,
You come out old and gray.

Dead leaves in your pockets
O my enchanted, have a care
Run, run from the little folk
Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets
And snowflakes in your hair



Why did this leap into my head today, and where did it come from? Until this morning, damned if I knew. I remember my brother singing it in the '60s when he came home from university. Everyone was singing and playing the guitar and going to hootenannys, whatever they were, and most of us sucked our songs off record albums, often with wrong words and crazy chords.

It took me quite a while to find any semblance of this song, except for a very Irish version of it on YouTube. His didn't much resemble mine. It spoke of leprechauns, which gave me a clue as to what the song was about. But my version was one of those cobbled-together-from-memory things. I was only 9 or 10 years old and impressionable. I had NO IDEA what this song meant or even where it came from: I remember finding it weird and disturbing, which it still is.



So today, thanks to the good graces of YouTube, I more or less hunted it down, but it wasn't easy. This was originally written by Malvina Reynolds, an eccentric folk genius who wrote Little Boxes (on the hillside) and What Have they Done to the Rain? This was one of her more obscure numbers and sounds like it's based on folk poetry. One false lead took me to a poem called The Little Land by Robert Louis Stevenson (ph?), but it was one of those "How Would you Like to Go Up in a Swing" kind-of things, echoes of childhood, etc. Not threatening enough.

Somewhere I found a reference to the Limelighters, a folk group we listened to a lot back then. It featured Glen Yarbrough (borough? Who has time to check?), a tenor with a voice that would cut through barbed wire. I remember quite a few of their songs, but not this one.



So it was still pretty obscure when I finally tracked down the available fragments and pieced them together with my bits of memory: hey, folk singers do that all the time. (I left out one line: someone's version said "Deadly in your pocket," which is completely nonsensical. 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy.) But somewhere else, someone made a comment that actually made sense: Reynolds had a sense of social satire which could be quite biting (see Little Boxes). Perhaps the song was about another kind of "enchantment", not by leprechauns, faeries or other "little folk", but by the seductiveness of riches and fame.

It actually works. First you're just looking in from the outside, watching all these charming people at play, and it looks harmless enough, so you stay around for "a game or two". But then, bizarrely, you wake up and realize that decades have passed in a flash. The gold pouring through your hands eventually runs out and disappears. As in those alien encounters where people mysteriously lose time, the lurch ahead into old age is frightening: suddenly you're a has-been who never was.



The dead leaves in your pockets that I took so literally as a child could be the deadened browned scorched currency of false fame, crumbling away into nothing. And I don't need to explain those snowflakes. Bright lights, white hair, cold stones. To enchant, literally, means to gain magical power over someone by chanting, usually in song. Soon the sound of enchantment becomes so strong that we can no longer make out the voice of the one we truly love, the only one whose love is not based on greed.

It's a kind of evil reverse fairy-tale where the victim quickly shrivels under forces he or she can't comprehend. So much for cute little leprechauns, Lucky Charms and Kiss Me, I'm Irish.

POST-MORTEM. I will confess that this is a rerun, originally posted in 2012. Six bloody years is long enough, and hey, if *I* don't remember it, no one else will! I was certain I'd be able to find ample imformation after all that time had passed - it always happens on the internet. What shocked me was that nothing had changed - in fact, it was even harder to find anything at all about this song. There was a weird pdf of Reynolds' song lyrics that looked like it was typewritten on an old Olivetti portable from 1959, but I couldn't do anything with it. All sung versions have disappeared. The Limelighters DID record it, and I was allowed to listen to 30 seconds of it, enough to realize my memory had been close to correct. Malvina included a few lines in the original which specified the "wee folk" were, in fact, leprechauns. Nearly every culture has a myth about tiny people running around in the woods, doing demonic mischief and scaring people half to death. Leprechaun is a horrible word when you look at it. Scares the living shit out of me. No wee folk for me! Go away from my door.

POST-POST DISCOVERY. All right. I have it! I have that lyric sheet from the Olivetti. Here is the relevant lyric:

As you can see, this is pretty close to the version at the beginning of this post, without those few lines about the leprechauns. The possible meaning of the lyric (being bedazzled by wealth and fame, while at the same time seduced and sucked dry) is made more clear by the line, "They'll dazzle you and promise you, and lead you by the hand". It couldn't be more clear, in fact. The Limelighters version leaves that verse out, so it starts in the middle, kind of. But we still get the message. 'Tis luck to catch a leprechaun. Except when it isn't.

POST-IT NOTE: This is a summer repeat, inspired by a comment I just had on the ORIGINAL post (from years ago! I just love it when I get those.) I hadn't thought about it in years!

Here is our conversation:

Anonymous July 29, 2022 at 5:35 PM

There's more now, and based on the information you've given, I've tracked down a Malvina Reynolds recording on YouTube. Also a short version by a Raymond Crooke. Also the Limelighters version, which is least like what I heard in the 60's. Thanks for the leads!

Margaret Gunning July 30, 2022 at 10:51 AM

I had almost forgotten about this! Yes, it amazes me how, if you check back in a few years, suddenly there's all sorts of videos pertaining to the subject at hand. YT grows exponentially by the year. Thank you for your comment!

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💛FLUFFY LITTLE DUMPLINGS! My best duckling video EVER

Haven't seen ANY birds for ever so long. The back yard is deserted! I've complained about this before, so I'll shut up now, but I honestly do not know what is going on, because everywhere we go now is virtually deserted. The neighbors across the back fence folded their tents in the night and disappeared in the weirdest "move" I ever saw. One day they were there, shouting and smoking pot with the dog yapping and strangling, and now the place looks scoured and abandoned. This seems to indicate sketchiness, because moving typically involves lots of hubbub and yells and boxes and vans and general mayhem, and there was NONE of that, not even by professional movers. What breaks my heart is that their two cats are gone, too - daily visitors to our yard, a sweet ginger and a handsome tuxedo. Both gone, along with all the birds. But here I have a record of just a few ducklings, the only ones I saw this year. What is going on?

😳SAY "AHHHHH!" CREEPY 1950s educational film😳

Creepy as fu*k! 

The Troll Doll Channel: GRUMPY CHORUS SINGS!

Lord, can these grumpy trolls SING!

💗The Troll Doll Channel: TROLL VILLAGE!💜

And this isn't all of them. Not by a long shot! These are just the trolls which have invaded my "workspace" (such as it is! Who wants to work anyway?)

🧡SWEET MAMA SQUIRREL (and - drama in the back yard!)

Squirrels are about all we get, these days. It's very depressing, and I don't know why it's happening. Everywhere we go, the bird count is nearly zero, at a time when the waters should be teeming with different species. The Blakeburn Lagoon is practically empty, when we used to see shovellers, ring-necks, wigeons, SWANS. . .and even a sandhill crane and an OTTER, to name only a few (red-tailed hawk?). Why have the birds abandoned so many places? Why is it happening everywhere? Only Burnaby Lake still has birds, but mostly geese, a few mallards, and hungry blackbirds. My darker senses tell me that Something is coming, maybe an earthquake, or something even worse, because birds have been known to have an acute spidey-sense for these things. I want them back! Birds are a huge part of my mental health, and helped me get through the worst of the pandemic - although they were already thinning out two years ago. With all the food I put out, I should be attracting them like a magnet, but all we see these days is fat squirrels and the odd finch at the window feeder. Will they EVER come back? Where are they? Why are they doing this?

BIGFOOT SAMBA!

STOP THE CLOCK! (short fiction)

Stop the clock (short fiction)



“Marcie! Hey it’s good to see you!”

“Hi, Julie.”

Julie looked her up and down. Up and down, then smiled brightly, her eyes glistening like wet caramels. Then came the single syllable.

“Wow.”

It wasn’t a “wow” like “wow, is that your new car?”. It was a “wow” like, “What happened to your new car?” It had a tiny backlilt, an inflection that was just a little bit “off”.

Marcie knew it wasn’t a good “wow”. It was almost a disappointed “wow”, but strained through a sort of Facebook screen so she could never be pinned down or held responsible.



“Wow yourself.”

“Yeah.!” The “yeah” started off as a high squeal, then sailed down to a whisper.

Julie looked away for just a second with a sort of reflexive hair-flip, like something you’d do in junior high. Marcie half-expected her to start chewing on the end of her braid. Then she brighted herself again.

“So what are you, y’knowwww – “

“Oh, same old thing.”

“Did you ever get – “

“No.”

“So are you self-publishing now? Whatever happened to that novel? You know, the one about the cruise ship and the - ”

“That was quite a while ago.”

“I can see that.” (See what? “That”.)

She hair-flipped again. “So what do you do now exactly, you know? I mean.”

“The same thing you do, Julie.”

“Oh, of course!” She kept looking Marcie up and down, her eyes flipping from head to mid-thigh, though pretending she wasn’t doing it.



“You know, it’s been an awfully long time since we’ve seen each other, Julie.”

“Tell me about it!”, with a well-practiced “oh, yeah!” eye-roll.

It was then that she noticed something funny about Julie. Or at least, she thought it was funny. She had a sort of glaze over her, like something you’d pour over cinnamon buns, or maybe a shell of amber. Glossy. Her smile was glossy too.

Had she done something to herself?

Marcie believed that, as you aged, your face decided to go one way or the other. It either went Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy looked almost the same in the ‘60s, well, at least both of them had normal faces, and now Shatner was round as a pumpkin and Nimoy looked like a burnt-out old matchstick.

Skinny faces got fat, fat faces got skinny. Gaunt-looking people rounded out and softened, as if their inner selves were working their way out. The healthy-looking ones housing gaunt souls ultimately lost the battle of looking like someone else.

But there was a third possibility, and that was to stop. Stop time, stop the clock ticking. Marcie always thought there was another word for that: “death”, but apparently not, because everywhere she looked these days, she saw people who had decided to stop the clock

Except that there was a cost.



As Julie pretended not to look at Marcie’s burgeoning weight, the little dewlappy thing that hung below her rounded chin, the lizard skin on her arms, Marcie pretended not to look at Julie’s House of Wax immobility, the shellacked quality which was now considered highly desirable, even as she heard the creepy murmur of Vincent Price in the background.

Some even turned the clock back. Ageing backwards, which was really some trick. If they kept on going, they’d be fetal in a few years, or disappearing altogether, their molecules just coming apart: poof!

“So, I guess you have a pretty big one coming up pretty soon.”

“A pretty big one?” For some insane reason Marcie thought “bowel movement”.

“Birthday!” She almost sang it, lilting high on the first syllable.

“Oh, Julie, how did you ever remember that?”

“I did your horoscope, silly, don’t you remember? Look at that.” She plucked a hair off the shoulder of Marcie’s blouse and looked at it.

“It’s a hair.”

“Yes, I know, but it’s - “

“Didn’t your hair used to be - wait, now what color was it, I mean before?”

“Before what?” Julie was starting to sound defensive. She could dish it out, but she definitely couldn’t take it.

“Before the Jurassic Period,” Marcie wanted to say, but she didn’t. All the nasty things she left unsaid were going to kill her, one of these days, like a great landslide falling down on her.



“You’re still slim,” she said instead. “How do you do it?”

“Oh! I cleanse. Every month. High colonics, they’re awesome! You just purge away all that gunk in your system. All those toxins.”

“I thought you were vegan.”

“Oh, but vegetables have chemicals on them no matter what, because of the water supply.”

“I still eat cows.” She was becoming extremely depressed. How to get rid of her?

“You’re going to kill yourself, Marcie,” Julie murmured, pulling out and using the appropriate facial expression before tucking it away again.

(“Yes, if this conversation goes on any longer.” Another rock in the landslide.)

“My grandmother ate cows.”

“But they were different cows.”

Marcie burst out laughing. She couldn’t keep the laugh to herself.

“I should say they were.”

“No, you don’t understand, they weren’t GMO cows.” Marcie thought this was something about General Motors or something. Her lack of interest finally must have registered on Julie.



“Listen, sweetie, I have to go now, but I want to give you something" (rummaging in her voluminous shoulder-bag) “- or actually, a few things, they’re freebies from the gym, you know? And the salon and stuff. Take them.” She thrust a wad of things in Marcie’s hands with a tight smile, turned around abruptly and gave a little Liza Minnelli backwards wave over her shoulder before flouncing away.

Marcie stood in the street shuffling through her treasures. A coupon for Turbo-Charge Fat Blaster Weight Loss Supplement, $2.00 off the first 60 capsules. An ad for a 60-ounce mega-capacity twenty-speed macerating Power-Juicer, 90-day trial free of charge! “Look 20 years younger in 20 minutes with Botuline, available NOW from your dentist!” A little packet of shampoo from a trendy salon, something called Blow your Head Off!, to mask “the grey” (grey sounding as ominous as some creepy space alien, and as undesirable). An ad for dental veneers with a woman smiling like a piano, showing every blinding-white tooth in her head.

God, she must think I’m a disgusting mess.

Just plaster things on the outside, and run-run-run. It’ll catch up with you one day. Sooner or later all your molecules will come apart, never to be replaced. When your molecules do come apart, there will literally be nothing left. Is that why you draw back so hard, by trying to minus-out the years you’ve slogged on this earth? Keep hitting the reset button. But what about your mind? Can you erase that too? I suppose you can. It’s done in a slightly different way.



They were friends then, quite good friends, had many excited conversations about this and that, though they often had a barbed quality to them, a putting-down-with-eyeroll. It was necessarily for them to have a mutual enemy or threat in order to really get along. Julie seemed like a super-coper, always on top of every situation, so Marcie was stunned when she suddenly, floridly fell apart. She had always been a little frantic, but this was something else, as if the tiny dancing ballerina on top of the music box had gradually accelerated until it was spinning a million miles an hour. This wasn’t any penny-ante breakdown, it was wholesale craziness, hallucinations, delusions, the works.

That sounds awful, Marcie thought, just heartless! It was pain and suffering, for sure, but it was funny how everyone around Julie seemed to suffer more than she did. And it was her family who decided she needed “shock”, something her sardonic old great-uncle called “Edison’s medicine”.

The shock re-set her for sure, but things weren’t the same after that. It was as if some mute but powerful presence deep in her psyche said: not this way; THAT way, and gave her a huge shove in the direction of artificiality. This was the way to make it. This was survival, solace, and something she could be really good at. As the years passed, her new strategy dovetailed beautifully with what the culture expected of her: the new Julie was popular at last, and because of that, Marcie just faded into the background. Not that Marcie went backwards: Julie just turned and walked away.



Now, it was: Wow. Look at you. All right. I’ve made decisions, more compromises than I ever thought I would have to. I am no prize. For this reason, I have one less friend in the world, though I suspect I lost her a long time ago. Life is inherently lonely, isn’t it? Aren’t the sweet fleeting times the very worst, because of how they always go away?

And why is it that when things are good, I mean, really good – as sweet as they can possibly be - we are always the last ones to know? Better not to recognize such beauty, even in ourselves, lest we cry out to a heedless universe in last-ditch desperation and despair: "Freeze!"