Wrap Up Post: Poe Fridays

Has it been one year already?!? Well, here we are at the end of Poe Fridays. I hope that my personal challenge has inspired a few of you to explore some of the poems or short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Thank you to Elizabeth, Tif and Linda for playing along at least some of the time.  And thanks to Rob for his Poe expertise.

I'll admit that it was hard to read something almost every week but it was well worth it!  Here are all of the poems and stories that I read and mostly enjoyed.  I had very few bad experiences in this and many surprisingly good ones.  I hope to keep Poe in a more regular rotation in my reading so don't be surprised if a review shows up every once in a while!

A Dream Within a Dream (poem) - 1/23/09

Annabel Lee (poem) - 1/30/09

The Tell-Tale Heart (short story) - 2/6/09

The Black Cat (short story) - 2/13/09

Hop-Frog (short story) - 2/20/09

Never Bet the Devil Your Head (short story) - 2/27/09

The Angel of the Odd (short story) - 3/6/09

The Fall of the House of Usher (short story) - 3/13/09

Lenore (poem) - 3/20/09

The Sphinx (short story) - 3/27/09

The Cask of Amontillado (short story) - 4/3/09

The Oval Portrait (short story) - 4/10/09

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (short story) - 4/17/09

Three Sundays in a Week (short story) - 4/24/09

Why The Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling (short story) - 5/1/09

To One in Paradise (poem) - 5/8/09

Berenice (short story) - 5/15/09

To My Mother (poem) - 5/22/09

The Assignation (short story) - 6/5/09

Diddling (short story) - 6/12/09

The Island of the Fay (short story) - 6/19/09

An Enigma (poem) - 6/26/09

The Gold Bug (short story) - 7/10/09

The Devil in the Belfry (short story) - 7/17/09

Morella (short story) - 7/24/09

Bridal Ballad (poem) - 7/31/09

Mesmeric Revelation (short story) - 8/14/09

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (short story) - 8/21/09

The Sleeper (poem) - 8/28/09

Eldorado (poem) - 9/4/09

The Spectacles (short story) - 9/11/09

The Premature Burial (short story) - 9/25/09

The Haunted Palace (poem) - 10/2/09

Some Words With a Mummy (short story) - 10/9/09

Ulalume (poem) - 10/16/09

The Pit and the Pendulum (short story) - 10/23/09

The Raven (poem) - 10/30/09

William Wilson (short story) - 11/6/09

The Oblong Box (short story) - 11/13/09

The Bells (poem) - 11/20/09

The Purloined Letter (short story) - 12/4/09

Ligeia (short story) - 12/11/09

X-ing a Paragrab (short story) - 12/18/09

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket - 1/8/10

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether - 1/15/10

Merely this and nothing more,
K

Poe Fridays: The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

Welcome to our last Poe Fridays post!  For my final short story, I decided to go with a slightly humorous one -- The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.  If you would like to, you can read it here.

A young man is traveling through France and decides to stop at a private asylum for a tour.  He is excited to see the methods in action of this particular facility -- the so-called "system of soothing".  This is a method where the inmates are given free reign and are indulged and even encouraged in their lunacies.  He is a bit disappointed when he finds that the facility's method has been recently changed but is curious nevertheless.  The director offers to give him a tour after dinner but the young man becomes suspicious during dinner that he may already be on the tour as the other people at the table are a bit odd.  He eventually finds out that he doesn't even know the half of it.

This was a great story to wrap up my journey with Poe.  It was funny with a good dose of crazy.  So, be sure and leave a comment and let me know what Poe you chose to read this week!  Next week will have a summary post with links to all of the readings in case you are curious about anything we read.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Poe,
K

Poe Fridays: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

Welcome back to Poe Fridays. For this week's discussion we tackled Poe's longest story, the novella-length The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. You can read it here.

So, I have to say that this was a lot less painful than I was led to believe it would be. It got a bit silly toward the end and I skimmed a bit when he started getting too technical on cargo holds or bird rookeries but, overall, it was just an adventure story. Our main character is a young man who sets out to sea against the wishes of his family. The gist of the story is that he would have been better off staying at home. Just about any calamity that can befall one at sea, happens to our poor lad.

On a tangent, I was interested to read that one of the boy's ships chose to look for the Aurora Islands. I learned about them when I read Hippolyte's Island this past year -- the story of a man who travels alone to the islands, finds them and then returns home to write about his journey. I didn't know that they were an actual set of phantom islands.

With next week being our last Friday before Poe's birthday and therefore our last Poe Friday (although I will post a summary of everything I read on the following Friday), I am offering it as a free day -- choose whatever Poe poem or story you would like to read and write about. Maybe there was something that we have already read that you loved and want to re-read? Or have you just been following along and would like to choose one thing to read before this ends? Perhaps I've even skipped one of your favorite Poe writings and you want to remedy it now. Whatever the case, I would love to see some participation next Friday for our final celebration of this great author. And if you were wondering, I haven't decided yet what I'm going to read but I think it might be a re-read!

Choosing to stick to dry land,
K

Poe Fridays: X-ing a Paragrab

Welcome to the last Poe Fridays story of 2009! We're going to take the next two weeks off for the holidays and come back in January for a couple more weeks until Poe's birthday.

The short story for this week was X-ing a Paragrab. You can read it here.

This is quite the silliest story I think I have ever read. A man heads to a new town where he believes there to be no newspaper. There is, of course, a newspaper and the man (by the ridiculous name of "Mr. Touch-and-go Bullet-head", no less) sets up shop across the street from the established rag. In his very first issue, he prints the following bizarre passage --

'Oh, yes!—Oh, we perceive! Oh, no doubt! The editor over the way is a genius—O, my! Oh, goodness, gracious!—what is this world coming to? Oh, tempora! Oh, Moses!'

The "editor over the way" is not amused and makes fun of this rant and its overuse of our jowly vowel O. Bullet-head at first wants to write a rebuttal that does not use the letter O at all but instead heads the other way and writes a paragraph in which almost every word contains the letter O. He leaves the paragraph with the typesetter who shortly finds that an employee of the rival paper has relieved them of all of their upper case and lower case O's. What to do? Why, replace them with x's of course -- hence the "X-ing" of the paragraph.

I'm hoping Rob can tell us whether this is a criticism of journalism in general or was inspired by a specific grudge. Either way, it has Poe's sharp-tongue but also his light humor in it. The paragraph itself (with all of the O's intact) is hilarious and even if you aren't interested in the story, I recommend heading over and reading just that part. It reminds me of British humor.

Our next Poe discussion will be on January 8th and so I thought that we could tackle Poe's only novel--The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket--in the coming weeks. This is apparently not an easy work to get through but I hope someone will brave it with me! You can read it online here but it will probably be easier to read as a print copy or an actual e-book.

Expounding on our astounding Poe (or Expxunding xn xur astxunding Pxe),
K

Poe Fridays: Ligeia

This week's Poe Fridays short story is the difficult-to-spell Ligeia. You can read it here.

This story begins with a beautifully romantic passage --

I CANNOT, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or, perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily progressive that they have been unnoticed and unknown.

But then of course --

Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a too --too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave, and the blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the gentle emotion. I saw that she must die --and I struggled desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There had been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to her, death would have come without its terrors; --but not so. Words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she wrestled with the Shadow.

When the lady dies, the narrator goes to England and buys an old, rundown abbey. He begins using opium and decorates the inside of the abbey in an opulent manner. He also adds to the abbey a second wife, Lady Rowena Trevanion. Because of his undying love for the departed Ligeia, he has little love to spare for his new wife and she, in turn, has little for him. Then Lady Rowena begins to have violent illnesses of an unknown origin. During one of her fits, she confesses feeling an unnatural presence in the room and the narrator also experiences some unexplainable phenomena. Shortly after, the poor woman dies and, while sitting with the body, the narrator starts noticing signs of life that come and go. But when the woman finally stirs, she is no longer Rowena.

This is an extremely creepy story! The beginning is full of gushing love, followed by the deepest sorrow, the most vivid hatred and then ending with sheer astonishment. This story certainly stirs the emotions of the reader. I wish the story continued past the point where Poe ends it. From the first paragraph, it seems that the narrator may have lost his mind.

Our short story for next week will be the humorous X-ing a Paragrab.

Glad to be the first wife,
K

Poe Fridays: The Purloined Letter

Welcome to the home stretch of our Poe Fridays. We are just over a month away from Poe's birthday again and the end of this reading journey! This week's reading was The Purloined Letter. You can read it here.

This is the third of Poe's detective stories featuring the enigmatic Frenchman C. Auguste Dupin, the inspiration for future investigators such as Sherlock Holmes. Dupin is visited by a police detective who is stumped in his attempts to retrieve a personal letter stolen from the Queen of France. Dupin, through methods of thought and reason, manages to solve the crime without leaving his home until the time when he is ready to retrieve the letter from the thief.

Poe thought this was the best of his "tales of ratiocination" and I would agree. In The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Mystery of Marie Roget, Dupin solves the crimes with a ridiculous amount of knowledge of trivial facts. In this story, he uses nothing but his knowledge of human nature to solve the mystery. This is much more interesting, especially to fans of future mystery fiction. Though this story gets a big bogged down at one point, it is generally a fascinating read.

The short story for next week will be Ligeia. Enjoy!

Observing human behavior for future crime-fighting purposes,
K

Poe Fridays: The Bells

Today's Poe Fridays poem is The Bells. You can read it here. I've copied the beginning of each part of it to represent the change of mood but you should definitely read the entire poem.

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;
...
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!
...
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,
...
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.

This poem was first published after Poe's death. It is a very thoughtful movement from birth to death and also an example of the many faces of a single symbol. This poem highlights the fact that we have different words for the same sounds based on the emotions of the moment -- bells "peal" when we are happy, "clang" when we are anxious and "toll" when they are rung in mourning. This is another of Poe's works that really comes to life when read out loud. There is musicality in the words and the rhythm that enhances the idea of the bells. This is one of my favorite Poe poems.

Because next week is Thanksgiving and I have family coming to visit, I'm going to take a break from Poe Fridays until the following week. The longish short story for December 4th will be The Purloined Letter -- another story featuring Poe's French detective, C. Auguste Dupin.

Still enjoying the bells of youth,
K

Poe Fridays: The Oblong Box

For this week's Poe Fridays, I chose the short story The Oblong Box. You can read it here.

This is the story of a man who sets out on an ocean voyage to New York. A close friend of his is also on the ship and is acting strangely. He is an artist of irregular temperament but he seems overly morose during the trip. He brings on board with him a 6 foot by 2 foot pine box which he keeps in his own cabin. This friend is also traveling with his sisters and his new wife -- who was reported to the narrator to be of extraordinary beauty, talent and wit. The narrator is surprised then to meet the wife and find her rather plain, uneducated and nervous. Though the narrator is mistaken for some time in thinking that the box contained a precious artwork, I didn't find it hard to guess what the titular "oblong box" really contained.

This was a very quick-reading and simply-written story. There was no philosophy and little mystery -- only the genuine actions of a grieving man and the puzzlement of a less-than-astute friend. Although the subject of this story is sad and a bit grotesque, I thought it was also touching.

Next week's Poe Fridays reading will be a poem, The Bells. It's an introduction to winter gone terribly wrong!

Hoping to be cherished even after death (but maybe not THAT cherished),
K

Poe Fridays: William Wilson

This week's Poe Fridays short story is William Wilson. You can read it here. All I knew going into this story was that it was a doppelgänger story.

The narrator is a man who has lived a vice-filled life. He wants to tell us his story and he uses the pseudonym William Wilson because his real name is now well-known and linked to his notorious reputation. He takes us back to his childhood when he used his dominant personality to get just about anything he wanted. When he went to boarding school, he quickly became a leader. His only challenge was another boy with the same build, the same birthday and coincidentally, the same name. This other William Wilson and our narrator always had an antagonistic and yet friendly relationship. The "other" would sometimes try to steer our narrator toward better behaviors but our William just ignored the advice and eventually came to hate the other boy. As he left this small school and went on to Eton and Oxford and then out into the world, the doppelgänger would always show up to foil his dishonest or lascivious plans. By this point, William's hatred escalates into fury and provokes a desperate act to end the story.

I'm sure it's no small thing that Poe used his own birth date in this story. He also uses his own experiences as a youth in England for the setting. Though Poe counted this as one of his best, I had a bit of trouble with the language in the story. It was difficult to follow the story in some places. Still, it was amusing to read about William's anger at finding someone that shared his name. I am one of those people that constantly gets mistaken for someone else and it drives me crazy -- although, not so crazy that I would kill anyone.

Next week's short story will be The Oblong Box. If you have any requests for stories in our last two months, let me know. We are quickly approaching Poe's birthday again, if you can believe it!

Wondering if anyone is really unique,
K

Poe Fridays: The Raven

This week's fantastic Poe Fridays poem is The Raven. If you haven't read it before, you can find it here. But even if you have read it, why not go back for a re-read ... I'll wait.

This is not only the most recognized Poe poem but I would venture that it is one of the most well-constructed poems of all time. The cadence is perfect, the word choice is inspired and the mounting tension throughout the poem provides for the perfect read-aloud experience.

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."

I'm not sure I've revealed this little tidbit about myself yet but I adore Vincent Price. I love him in his classic horror films and also in his dramatic roles (like my favorite film noir, Laura). And as the most fabulous thing about him is his voice, I leave you on this Halloween Eve with his reading of The Raven.



And for J.T. -- I found the Simpsons version!

For next week's Poe Fridays, let's read the short story William Wilson.

Nevermore,
K

Poe Fridays: The Pit and the Pendulum

For Poe Fridays this week, I chose one of my favorite Poe horror stories, The Pit and the Pendulum. You can read it here.

This is a psychological thriller told in the first person. The narrator has been condemned to death by the Inquisition in Toledo. When his sentence is passed, he blacks out and awakes in a dark room with a slimy floor. We then experience with him the different tortures that he is subjected to. The "pit" and the "pendulum" are but two of these.

I love the darkness and the pacing of this story. It has the same escalation style as a few of Poe's other works. This is a paragraph from the middle of the tale --

What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal, during which I counted the rushing vibrations of the steel! Inch by inch -- line by line -- with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages -- down and still down it came! Days passed -- it might have been that many days passed -- ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odor of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed -- I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at some rare bauble.

It would be impossible not to form a vivid picture of this horrific scene in your mind. Poe is fantastic at relaying both emotion and the physical environment in this tale. I love it!

As I'm sure you have been expecting, I couldn't pass up the chance for a Halloween Eve reading of the quintessential Poe, The Raven. I hope that you will all join me in revisiting this classic poem!

Fearing another Inquisition,
K

Poe Fridays: Ulalume

This week's Poe Fridays poem was the October-themed Ulalume. You can read it here. My apologies for the link included last week that seems to have been missing a few of the stanzas.

I'll share the first three stanzas with you as Poe employs a very unusual technique of word repetition in this poem.

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere--
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir--
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul--
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll--
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole--
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere--
Our memories were treacherous and sere,--
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)--
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
(Though once we had journeyed down here)--
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

The first thing I had to do when I finished this poem for the first time was to find out the meanings of some of the words. Ulalume? It's a name. Sere means "dried-up". Scoriac refers to scoria - a type of volcanic rock similar to pumice but more cindery. Mount Yaanek is Mount Erebus, a volcano in Antarctica.

After clearing up some of the vocabulary, I appreciated this poem much more. It's actually a rather simple one that again explores one of Poe's preferred topics -- a dead lover. The narrator goes for a walk on a crisp October night, not realizing that his steps will take him to the burial chamber of his lost love, Ulalume, whom he buried a year ago on that day. His grief is still fresh and is exacerbated by this unconscious return to the crypt. As with all of Poe's poetry about loss, many different theories abound as to whether this poem was inspired by the death of Virginia or perhaps a more general musing about the many losses of women in his life. Whatever the influence, this is a touching poem and a great read for a cold October evening.

For next week I chose a horror classic, the short story The Pit and the Pendulum. I'm really excited to re-read this one.

Writing this on a crisp, October morn -- enjoying this on a brisk October morn,
K

Poe Fridays: Some Words With A Mummy

This week's Poe Fridays short story was Some Words With A Mummy. You can read it here.

This story reminded me of one we read a few months ago -- The Angel of the Odd. It is another humorous tale that begins with an overindulging narrator. In The Angel it was a heavy drinker who has "odd" things happen all around him. In the current story it's a narrator that overindulges in food and stout. After he heads to bed with this large meal in his belly, he is woken by a message from a friend who intends to dissect a mummy that very night. A group of observers break through the many layers of papyrus coverings to find a very well preserved mummy. They decide to postpone the dissection until the next night until someone mentions trying some galvanic experiments (electrocution). You can imagine what happens in order to fulfill the title and for them to have "some words" with the mummy. In fact, the mummy shocks and humiliates the men with tales of Egyptian superiority to modern culture.

Refreshingly, Poe didn't spend the first page or two of this story setting up with a cryptic or dull background passage. The story starts immediately and is really funny and a nice satire of the elitist culture at the time. The men were so sure of their superiority and didn't take it well when the mummy reminded them of the proficiency of the Egyptians in so many scientific and mechanical fields. I can see though why this story didn't make it into any mummy short story anthologies. There's not a lot of scare behind a well-spoken yet somewhat smug ancient who might be in the dreams of a man who ate a few pounds of Welsh-rabbit and drank five bottles of stout for supper.

Next week's Poe Fridays selection will be the poem Ulalume.

Also, if you are near Baltimore this weekend, you can attend Poe's funeral on Sunday. There will be a limited number of tickets available at the door and a faux Poe will be in the coffin. He died at the age of 40 on October 7, 1849. Rest in peace, Mr. Poe.

Mentally preparing my own questions for a mummy (just in case),
K

Poe Fridays: The Haunted Palace

Here we are again at Poe Friday and for this week I chose the poem The Haunted Palace. You can read it here. This is an excerpt --

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!- for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

This poem was incorporated into the story The Fall of the House of Usher but it was previously published on its own. It's not in fact about a palace of stone but the palace of the mind. It's a happy, healthy place for a time but then "evil things" come and bring about the downfall of the "palace". This is quite a depressing poem, especially since there's not much discussion of what the malady was that brought down the mind of the man. This poem honestly just makes me feel sad.

For next week I've chosen the short story Some Words With a Mummy. I'm hoping it's scary but knowing Poe, it might be philosophical instead.

Spending time cleaning and polishing in the palace,
K

Poe Fridays: The Premature Burial

This week's Poe Fridays short story is the paranoia-inducing The Premature Burial. You can read it here.

The first half of the story gives supposedly real examples of people that have been buried alive. Some made it out safely and some didn't. The second half is the narrator's own story of how he suffered from catalepsy, a condition that mimicked death, and was in constant fear of premature burial by someone who didn't know of the condition. Apparently, this was a common fear at the time this story was written.

To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it has frequently, very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who think.

I thought this was a bit of an exaggeration but apparently there were hundreds of such cases and there was a Victorian Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive. This is also the era when they were fitting coffins with safety devices such as bells that the buried person could ring if they were indeed still alive.

I can only assume that this was a real fear for Poe as he wrote about it more than once. Yet in this story the narrator overcomes the fear after an incident where he believes he has been interred prematurely. Poe gives the opinion that the fear of death is crippling and that life is better lived without that fear. I doubt he ever lost his own fear of death though.

For next week, I've chosen the poem The Haunted Palace.

Admitting to a fear of small spaces, especially ones under dirt,
K

Poe Fridays: The Spectacles

The short story The Spectacles was the Poe Fridays choice for this week. You can read it here.

This is an amusing story that takes a couple pages to get going but then it's quite quick and humorous. The narrator is a young man who is quite vain and refuses to wear spectacles to improve his poor vision. He is at the opera with a friend and notices a woman of exquisite form up in a box. He decides that she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and that it is love at first sight. He then attempts to meet her but is thwarted by not having an introduction. He writes her a letter but nothing more can be done properly. Eventually he throws propriety to the wind and finds her on a twilight walk and professes his love. She takes him to a dark salon and eventually agrees to marry him on one condition -- that he begin wearing spectacles. He says he will start on the day they are married which they decide should be the next day. They marry before dawn and what follows is somewhat predictable but still hilarious!

This was a strangely lighthearted piece for Poe. There was no gruesome side to it and in fact the ending was better than the narrator deserved. Perhaps Poe was doing well at this point and had a temporarily brighter outlook on life.

We will postpone next week's Poe Fridays due to the festivities of BBAW (Book Blogger Appreciation Week). Our next date will be September 25 and the selection will be the first of our seasonal stories, The Premature Burial.

Not letting vanity make a fool of me,
K

Poe Fridays: Eldorado

This week's Poe Fridays selection was the poem Eldorado. Since it's short, I'll reproduce it here.

GAILY bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old --
This knight so bold --
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow --
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be --
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied, --
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

What a sad but sweet poem. I'm not sure if the message is that the only true happiness is after death or if at the end of your life you can look back and see that your life was the true City of Gold. This was one of Poe's last poems and perhaps shows us that he was thinking about death.

For next week let's read The Spectacles. You can read it here if you don't have a Poe anthology. This story is almost twenty pages so be sure and set aside enough time!

Discovering the Eldorado in everyday life,
K

Poe Fridays: The Sleeper

We returned to poetry for this week's Poe Fridays with The Sleeper. You can read it here. It's a bit longer poem so I won't reprint it here except for an excerpt --

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!

I'm sure you could have guessed that Poe wasn't going to be talking about someone taking a nap in this poem! This one has beautiful descriptions of the moon at midnight but it gets a bit cheesy when he brings in the worms. This isn't as much of a "dead lover" poem as many of his others. It seems more of a general musing on what does or doesn't happen after death. There are pleasing parts of the poem but I'm not in love with the whole.

I'm swamped with a ridiculously huge reading queue right now so let's grab another poem for next week ... the short Eldorado.

Wishing all those who have passed a peaceful repose,
K

Poe Fridays: The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

This week's Poe Fridays short story was the creepy and grody The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. If you want to play along, you can read it here. This story gets a bit repulsive so don't read it right before you're planning on eating. Yeah right, you say? How about the phrase "profuse out-flowing of a yellowish icor ... of a pungent and highly offensive odor". Now add to that the fact that this came out from under a man's eyelids. Blech!

This is our follow-up to the mesmerism story from last week which was quite high-falutin' and philosophical. Poe took the other direction with this story to tell of mesmerizing a man about to die of tuberculosis. He apparently manages to keep the body of the man in a preserved state until after seven months he decides to break the hold on the man. What follows is not good. Apparently, the man had been dead for a LONG time.

Ahh Poe ... just when you start thinking that his writing has a depth and poetic quality, you move on to a story like this with "detestable putrescence" in it. This is definitely a stereotypical story for him. Strangely, I miss the poetry. So for next week, let's go back to a poem ... The Sleeper.

Putting off lunch for a little while,
K

Poe Fridays: Mesmeric Revelation

The short story I chose for this week's Poe Fridays is Mesmeric Revelation. You can read it here.

I'm having major internet issues and it doesn't stay up for any reasonable amount of time so this will be a quick analysis, hopefully with a window of connectivity to get it out to my fine readers ...

Poe, or the narrator "P", postulates that a person who has been mesmerized multiple times is able to sense things from another plane. He has a friend that he has been mesmerizing that is very ill (probably with tuberculosis) who thinks he has insight into the mystery of God and wants Poe to mesmerize him and ask some questions about God and the soul while he has access to the other plane. Thus begins a long and detailed discourse comparing matter and mind and well ... let's leave it to philosophers to debate what Poe states is true about the nature of God and man.

This was incredibly tiresome but so incredibly Poe. I always think of him as that irritating friend (we all have one unless, god forbid, you are that person!) who always acts like they know everything about anything. No matter what the subject, they will jump in and go off (sometimes in obvious wrong directions) until they have killed the conversation. This is how I imagine a drunk, boorish Poe on a bad night!

For next week, let's have some gory fun with the mesmerism topic and read the short story The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.

Taking philosophy out of the hands of drunks,
K