Old Time has turned another page Of eternity and truth; He reads with a warning voice to age, And whispers a lesson to youth. A year has fled o’er heart and head Since last the yule log burnt; And we have a task to closely ask, What the bosom and brain have learnt? Oh! let us hope that our sands have run With wisdom’s precious grains; Oh! may we find that our hands have done Some work of glorious pains. Then a welcome and cheer to the merry new year, While the holly gleams above us; With a pardon for the foes who hate, And a prayer for those who love us.
We may have seen some loved ones pass To the land of hallow’d rest; We may miss the glow of an honest brow And the warmth of a friendly breast: But if we nursed them while on earth, With hearts all true and kind, Will their spirits blame the sinless mirth Of those true hearts left behind? No, no! it were not well or wise To mourn with endless pain; There’s a better world beyond the skies, Where the good shall meet again. Then a welcome and cheer to the merry new year, While the holly gleams above us; With a pardon for the foes who hate, And a prayer for those who love us.
Have our days rolled on serenely free From sorrow’s dim alloy? Do we still possess the gifts that bless And fill our souls with joy? Are the creatures dear still clinging near? Do we hear loved voices come? Do we gaze on eyes whose glances shed A halo round our home? Oh, if we do, let thanks be pour’d To Him who hath spared and given, And forget not o’er the festive board The mercies held from heaven. Then a welcome and cheer to the merry new year, While the holly gleams above us; With a pardon for the foes who hate, And a prayer for those who love us.
About the Poet
Eliza Cook was born on December 24, 1818, in London, England. Self-educated as a child, she began writing poems at the age of fifteen and published her first poetry collection, Lays of a Wild Harp: A Collection of Metrical Pieces (John Bennett, 1835), two years later.
Cook also published poems in magazines such as Metropolitan Magazine, New Monthly Magazine, and Weekly Dispatch, which published her most popular poem, “The Old Arm-Chair.” In 1838, Cook published her second collection, Melaia and Other Poems, which was well received in both England and America. It was reissued in 1844.
Known as a poet of the working class, Cook wrote poems that advocated for political freedom for women and addressed questions of class and social justice. Despite her popularity, she was criticized for the ways in which she bucked gender conventions in both her writing and her life; Cook wore male clothing and had a relationship with American actress Charlotte Cushman, to whom she addressed a number of her poems.
In 1849, Cook started a penny-biweekly called Eliza Cook’s Journal, which contained poems, reviews, and social essays written mostly by her for a female audience. She continued the publication until 1854. Plagued by bad health in the last years of her life, Cook published little; she died on September 23, 1889, in Wimbledon, England.
Too many cracks precede the spectacular breaking. Each
story begins in a different dark- ness. And light: think how it catches
on any surface (pane or hinge or keyhole) and
out of night (out of nothing), all at once: a window,
a door. It’s a metaphor (and then it isn’t), darkness.
When I dream again it’s the old kitchen—I
open the oven and sound, like ropes of heat, drifts
out; a shimmering. Familiar and confusing. Uncanny,
and then unmistakable: our voices, recorded. Playback
and loop, now—every aching word we whispered here.
About this Poem
“I’m fascinated by the ways in which secrets are kept and revealed in families, how sometimes what can’t be acknowledged doesn’t drop out of sight so much as it becomes ambient, atmospheric. Coming to recognize the truth, then, is like a trick the eye plays: suddenly it is possible to see what was always there, unrecognized, and the world becomes newly tangible and remarkably uncertain at once, charged with the ordinary strangeness of a dream.”
—Nancy Kuhl
I think all families have their secrets. I know mine has numerous ones: I’m gay, my niece is transgendered, several members have had affairs on their spouses, and the list goes on, probably more than I know. So, when I read this poem, it seemed appropriate for this time of year. It’s the holiday season when everyone keeps their secrets as bottled up as possible. Sometimes, the secrets come out in whispers, sometimes in dribbles, sometimes with shouts, and sometimes not at all. Secrets can tear a family apart even though most believe keeping the secrets can keep the family together. Some secrets are worth keeping for self-preservation, but mostly, they are just a lie of omission.
There were a lot of pictures I could have used for this post: a family gathered around a holiday table, someone looking out a window with his image reflecting off the windowpane, “any surface (pane or / hinge or keyhole,” a guy sleeping, “ When I dream again,” or a guy opening an oven, “open the oven and sound.” However, I thought that someone looking at their reflection in a mirror was “ a metaphor / (and then it isn’t).” Because when we look in the mirror, we see our ourselves, and hopefully, we see who we know we are, not the secrets that we keep.
About the Poet
Nancy Kuhl is the author of several collections, most recently On Hysteria (Shearsman Books, 2022) and Granite (A Published Event, 2021). She lives in Black Rock, Connecticut.
I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover: My arms shall welcome you when other arms are tired; I stand to wait for you, patient in the darkness, Offering forgetfulness of all that you desired.
I ask no merriment, no pretense of gladness, I can love heavy lids and lips without their rose; Though you are sorrowful you will not weary me; I will not go from you when all the tired world goes.
I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover; I promise faithfulness no other lips may keep; Safe in my bridal place, comforted by darkness, You shall lie happily, smiling in your sleep.
About this Poem
“The Dark Cavalier” appears in Margaret Widdemer’s collection The Old Road to Paradise (Henry Holt and Company, 1918). Oft republished and heavily anthologized, the poem is recognized as one of Widdemer’s best. Poet Margery Swett Mansfield, in a review of Widdemer’s work published in Poetry magazine, vol. 33, no. 5 (Feb 1929), calls it “Margaret Widdemer at her emotional best [. . .].” In The Literary Digest, vol. 57, no. 6 (May 11, 1918), the editors claim that Widdemer “has seldom done a finer piece of work than when she wrote this haunting lyric [. . .].” Finally, in a biographical note at the end of The Second Book of Modern Verse (Houghton Mifflin, 1920), critic, editor, and poet Jessie Belle Rittenhouse writes, “She is a poet of much delicacy, and several of her poems, notably ‘The Dark Cavalier’ in this volume, are among the best lyric work of the period.”
About the Poet
Margaret Widdemer, born on September 30, 1884, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was a poet, novelist, and children’s writer. She was the author of several titles, including the collection The Old Road to Paradise (Henry Holt and Company, 1918), which won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in a split decision with Carl Sandburg’s Cornhuskers (Henry Holt and Company, 1918). She died on July 14, 1978.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 9, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
I debated using the picture above because it’s more explicit than I usually use, but I decided it fit the poem too perfectly and was artistic enough to not be too explicit.
Why not a meadow? Why not a little clearing and a stream to wade in? Why not take our pants off, a little respite from our partners who couldn’t see us, who’d never see us no matter what we did? What we did was wrong, the way we did it. It was miraculous, it took hold long after we trudged back to our spouses. So many years harboring a secret. Thank you for telling me about growing up in Queens, daddy’s milk truck skittering about Northern Boulevard looking for your favorite ice cream. And the darkness: how shades were drawn, how your mother would never recover from your father. How many of us have been stymied by those early dramas until we married them? So many years, so many hungry years after. Thank you for the apricots in the mail, thank you more for appearing at my door with so little time left: no going back to field our regrets. Old as we are, you are here and now, why not a meadow and a clearing?
About this Poem
“This poem was inspired by the pleasure of a long, deep friendship. Unmediated intimacy, with its concomitant trust and pleasure in another person, is a rare and treasured gift—even more so if it survives our histories and passionate mistakes. The poem aspires to give texture to that journey, to those feelings.”—Ira Sadoff
About the Poet
Ira Sadoff was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 7, 1945, of Russian-Jewish ancestry. He earned a BA in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University in 1966 and an MFA from the University of Oregon in 1968.
In 1975, Sadoff published his first collection of poetry, Settling Down (Houghton Mifflin). Since then, he has published several poetry collections, most recently Country, Living (2020), True Faith (2012), and Barter (2003), which delves into his personal past, specifically concerning love and bereavement, as well as the historical and global past, referencing Beethoven, Vietnam, and the fall of Communism. Other recent collections include Grazing (1998), which included poems that were awarded the American Poetry Review’s Leonard Shestack Prize, the Pushcart Poetry Prize, and the George Bogin Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America; Emotional Traffic(1989); A Northern Calendar (1981), which charts the arrival and passage of the seasons; and Palm Reading in Winter (1978).
About Sadoff’s work, the poet Gerald Stern has said, “Nowhere else in American poetry do I come across a passion, a cunning, and a joy greater than his. And a deadly accuracy. I see him as one of the supreme poets of his generation.” On awarding Sadoff the Bogin Memorial Prize, the poet Alan Shapiro said,
Beyond the energetic syntax and the astonishing range of idiom and tone, what I so admire in these poems is the just yet always unpredictable weaving together of individual and collective life, the insightful, almost seamless integration of personal experience in all its unredemptive [sic] anguish with the heterogeneous realities of American culture.
Sadoff is also the author of three works of prose, most recently History Matters: Contemporary Poetry on the Margins of American Culture (2009), which, through the work of poets like Czesław Miłosz and Frank O’Hara, argues that poets live and write within history; An Ira Sadoff Reader: Selected Poetry and Prose (1992), a collection of stories, poems, and essays about contemporary poetry; and Uncoupling (1982), a novel.
Sadoff is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1973, he was a fellow at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and in 1974, he was the Alan Collins Fellow in Poetry and Prose at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His poetry has been widely anthologized, most recently in The Best American Poetry Series, in 2008.
Sadoff has served as poetry editor of the Antioch Review, and was cofounder of the Seneca Review. He has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and in the MFA programs at the University of Virginia and Warren Wilson College. He previously served as the Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Professor of English at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.
Stars and people and daffodils won’t last forever. Hands down, forever will succumb to a single sensation, one last heaven, one last shudder lost voice carried over the winds of the body, the canyons of the hands in a shower, snow or warm? Last ashes of satisfaction dance above an open mouth, teeth like light in an emptied room, the wet music of the tongue. Somebody will find the edge to all of humanity’s joy, a flood, a punctuation will flood her with its certainty, or them, or us, all at once, and that lonely breach will ripple through, on and out, with indefatigable atoms. Those asking hands never to slow their speeding ship one last starry daffodil excess will blow its soft dunes, that lost voice, back, over everything that ever came before. Until emptied out. And if you slow, if you slowly reach across your own body until you feel it, too, even now? You can come to an end, even now. It lasts, wanting to.
About this Poem
“I often wonder about pleasure and how we talk about it, and about what happens in the silences beyond that is more alluring still. Those things are marked by the limits of our imagination, which it is the work of poetry to understand and expand. I wrote ‘The Last Orgasm’ in the spillover energy from a prose project on the sublime. In some ways, this poem serves as a meditation on the sublime edge between what we can witness and what we cannot bear to. It is also simply a love poem.”—Tobias Wray
About the Poet
Tobias Wray is a writer, teacher, and arts organizer.
Poems, reviews, and other writing appear widely in literary journals, including on Verse Daily, Poem-a-Day, Impossible Archetype, The Arkansas International, Hunger Mountain, and The Georgia Review. His work has also been anthologized in Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology (Autumn House Press) and elsewhere.
An assistant professor at the University of Central Oklahoma where he directs UCO’s Creative Writing Programs, his interests range from experimental poetics to queer and speculative literatures to literary translation. He served as director of undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs at the University of Idaho until 2021. He was a poetry editor for Cream City Review and, until 2017, helped to coordinate Eat Local :: Read Local, a program that partners restaurants with poets from Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin.
He is a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.
The sun hath shed its kindly light, Our harvesting is gladly o’er Our fields have felt no killing blight, Our bins are filled with goodly store.
From pestilence, fire, flood, and sword We have been spared by thy decree, And now with humble hearts, O Lord, We come to pay our thanks to thee.
We feel that had our merits been The measure of thy gifts to us, We erring children, born of sin, Might not now be rejoicing thus.
No deed of our hath brought us grace; When thou were nigh our sight was dull, We hid in trembling from thy face, But thou, O God, wert merciful.
Thy mighty hand o’er all the land Hath still been open to bestow Those blessings which our wants demand From heaven, whence all blessings flow.
Thou hast, with ever watchful eye, Looked down on us with holy care, And from thy storehouse in the sky Hast scattered plenty everywhere.
Then lift we up our songs of praise To thee, O Father, good and kind; To thee we consecrate our days; Be thine the temple of each mind.
With incense sweet our thanks ascend; Before thy works our powers pall; Though we should strive years without end, We could not thank thee for them all.
About this Poem “A Thanksgiving Poem” by Paul Laurence Dunbar is a heartfelt expression of gratitude and devotion to God. The poem rejoices in the bountiful harvest and acknowledges divine protection from calamities. It reflects on human imperfection and the recognition that their blessings are a result of God’s grace and mercy, not their merits. Dunbar emphasizes divine providence and the vastness of God’s blessings. The poem invokes feelings of reverence, awe, and gratitude, inspiring readers to embrace a spirit of thanksgiving and humility in the face of divine abundance.
About this Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of the first African American poets to gain national recognition, was born on June 27, 1872, in Dayton, Ohio. By the age of fourteen, Dunbar had poems published in the Dayton Herald. While attending Dayton Central High School, where he was the only student of color, Dunbar further distinguished himself by publishing in the high school newspaper, and then by serving as its editor-in-chief. He was also president of the school’s literary society and was class poet. In his free time, he read the works of the Romantic poets, including John Keats and William Wordsworth, as well as the works of the American poets John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Later that year, Dunbar moved to Chicago, hoping to find work at the first World’s Fair. He befriended Frederick Douglass, who found him a job as a clerk, and also arranged for Dunbar to read a selection of his poems at the exposition. Douglass said of Dunbar that he was “the most promising young colored man in America.” By 1895, Dunbar’s poems began appearing in major national newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times. With the help of friends, he published his second collection, Majors and Minors (Hadley & Hadley, 1895). The poems that were written in standard English were called “majors,” while those in dialect were termed “minors.” Although the “major” poems outnumber those written in dialect, it was the dialect poems that brought Dunbar the most attention. The noted novelist and critic William Dean Howells gave a favorable review to the poems in Harper’s Weekly.
Howells’s recognition helped Dunbar gain national and international acclaim, and, in 1897, he embarked on a six-month reading tour of England. He also produced a new collection, Lyrics of Lowly Life (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1896). Upon returning to America, Dunbar received a clerkship at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Shortly thereafter, he married the writer Alice Ruth Moore. While living in Washington, Dunbar published a short story collection, Folks from Dixie (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1898); a novel entitled The Uncalled (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1898); and two more collections of poems—Lyrics of the Hearthside (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1899) and Poems of Cabin and Field (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1899). He also contributed lyrics to a number of musical reviews.
In 1898, Dunbar’s health deteriorated; he believed the dust in the library contributed to his tuberculosis. He left his job to dedicate himself full time to writing and giving readings. Over the next five years, he would produce three more novels and three short story collections. Dunbar separated from Alice Dunbar in 1902 and, soon thereafter, he suffered a nervous breakdown and a bout of pneumonia. Although ill, Dunbar continued to write poems. His collections from this time include Lyrics of Love and Laughter (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1903); Howdy, Howdy, Howdy (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1905); and Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1903). These books confirmed his position as America’s premier Black poet. Dunbar’s steadily deteriorating health caused him to return to his mother’s home in Dayton, Ohio, where he died on February 9, 1906, at the age of thirty-three.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’ We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: ‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him, But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father’s saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
About this Poem
We might interpret this piece of family wisdom as meaning: having clear boundaries between ourselves and others leads to healthy relationships between neighbors because they won’t fall out over petty territorial disputes or ‘invading each other’s space’. For instance, we may like our neighbors, but we don’t want to wake up and draw the curtains to find them dancing naked on our front lawn. (Although, that’s according to who your neighbor is. I’ve had a few that I wouldn’t mind dancing naked in my yard.) There are limits. Respecting each other’s boundaries helps to keep things civil and amicable. However, does this mean that Frost himself approves of such a notion?
“Mending Wall” is frequently misinterpreted, as Frost himself observed in 1962, shortly before his death. “People are frequently misunderstanding it or misinterpreting it.” But he went on to remark, “The secret of what it means I keep,” which doesn’t really clear up the matter. However, we can analyze “Mending Wall” as a poem contrasting two approaches to life and human relationships: the approach embodied by he speaker of his poem and the approach represented by his neighbor. It is the neighbor, rather than the poem’s speaker, who insists: “Good fences make good neighbors.” The phrase has become like another of Frost’s sentiments: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, / I took the one less travelled by.” This statement, from “The Road Not Taken,” is often misinterpreted because readers assume Frost is proudly asserting his individualism, whereas in fact, the lines are filled with regret over “what might have been.”
“Good fences make good neighbors” is actually more straightforward: people misinterpret the meaning of this line because they misattribute the statement to Frost himself, rather than to the neighbor with whom the speaker disagrees. As the first line of the poem has it, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”: this, spoken by the poem’s speaker, clearly indicates that Frost does not agree with the view that “good fences make [for] good neighbors.”
It is also worth noting that this line, “Good fences make good neighbors” did not originate with Frost: it is first found in the Western Christian Advocate (13 June 1834), as noted in The Yale Book of Quotations.
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] By E. E. Cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
About the Poem
“i carry your heart with me (i carry it in” by E.E. Cummings was first published in June 1952 in Poetry magazine. It is an unconventional sonnet, and as an unconventional poet, Cummings plays with the established styles of poetry for the benefit of meaning and aesthetics. It is important to note the aesthetics of his poetry play a role in the message being delivered, something which is clearly seen in this poem.
The poem details a powerful, romantic love from start to finish. Even the structure demonstrates this by breaking old-fashioned rules but still managing to be clear. The sweet intention is not lost; if anything, it is strengthened by the unconventionality. It mirrors the words of strength and unity, lack of fear. Everything in the speaker’s life, including the soul, rests in this love and in the very being of the person meant to receive the message. The unique structure of the poem also serves to demonstrate the oneness of the love the speaker feels. In addition, it also shows how the beauty of the love knows no bounds. In other words, it is not restricted by any old rules or traditions. Just as the speaker is not restricted in life due to the courage his or her love provides.
The overarching themes of this piece are love, admiration, and fortitude. The admiration of the speaker is not just assumed because he or she is in love, it is also evident in the writing itself. The line “for beautiful you are my world,my true)” shows the high esteem in which the lover is held. All three themes interweave and work with each other to make the poem even more beautiful, rather than each theme standing alone. This adds coherency to the fourth theme seen in the poem, unity. Though it may not be as explicit in the lines when read, unity is definitely a very present topic throughout the piece.
About the Poet
Edward Estlin (E.E.) Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School.
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between his lifetime summer home, Joy Farm in New Hampshire, and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including “Buffalo Bill’s.” Serving as Cummings’ debut to a wider American audience, these “experiments” foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
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 blessed 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 farther 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 all my 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 of 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!
Sometimes, there are pieces of literature that are ingrained in your mind with a voice that is not your own. One of those is Linus reciting Chapter 2 from the Gospel of Luke in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Likewise, I can never read “The Raven” without hearing it in Vincent Price’s voice. Christopher Lee also did a famous reading of the poem, but It’s Vincent Price that I would suspect every American of my generation, and possibly the one before, is more familiar with the Vincent Price version. One of my teachers had a record of the Price version, and I have always found it wonderfully creepy, as Vincent Price’s voice always was. His horror movies were dreadful, but Price’s voice is what really made him famous. Take a listen:
“The Raven” was first attributed to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. Its publication made Poe popular in his lifetime, although it did not bring him much financial success. The poem was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. Critical opinion is divided as to the poem’s literary status, but it nevertheless remains one of the most famous poems ever written.
The poem tells of a distraught lover who is paid a mysterious visit by a talking raven. The lover, often identified as a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas (an epithet of the Greek Goddess Athena which recalls her attributes as the goddess of warfare), the raven seems to further antagonize the protagonist with its constant repetition of the word “Nevermore”. The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references. Poe claimed to have written the poem logically and methodically, with the intention to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay, “The Philosophy of Composition.”
In the essay, Poe traces the logical progression of his creation of “The Raven” as an attempt to compose “a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.” He claims that he considered every aspect of the poem. For example, he purposely set the poem on a, pardon the cliché, dark and stormy night, causing the raven to seek shelter. He purposefully chose a pallid bust to contrast with the dark plume of the bird. The bust was of Pallas in order to evoke the notion of scholar, to match with the presumed student narrator poring over his “volume[s] of forgotten lore.” No aspect of the poem was an accident, he claims, but is based on total control by the author.
Even the term “Nevermore,” he says, is based on logic following the “unity of effect.” The essay states Poe’s conviction that a work of fiction should be written only after the author has decided how it is to end and which emotional response, or “effect,” he wishes to create. Once this effect has been determined, the writer should decide all other matters pertaining to the composition of the work, including tone, theme, setting, characters, conflict, and plot. In this case, Poe logically decides on “the death… of a beautiful woman” because it is “unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” Some commentators have taken this to imply that pure poetry can only be attained by the eradication of female beauty. Biographers and critics have often suggested that Poe’s obsession with this theme stems from the repeated loss of women throughout his life, including his mother Eliza Poe, his foster mother Frances Allan and, later, his wife Virginia.
The raven itself, Poe says, is meant to become symbolic by the end of the poem. By the end, Poe wanted his reader to see the Raven as symbolic, but it is not to appear so until the very last stanza when the reader is to see the Raven as symbolic of Mournful and Never-ending. This may imply an autobiographical significance to the poem, alluding to the many people in Poe’s life who had died.
Poe is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States and is best known for his poetry, such as “The Raven” and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. While not all of his writings were Gothic, all of his writing is anchored in Romanticism. The fictionalized portrayals of Poe often show him as a “mad genius” or “tormented artist” while blending depictions of the characters in his stories suggesting that Poe and his characters share identities. I always associate Poe with the macabre aspects of Halloween, which is why I am featuring Poe and his most famous poem today of all days.
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 wingèd 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 kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me— Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we— Of many far wiser than we— And neither the angels in Heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea— In her tomb by the sounding sea.
“Annabel Lee” is the last complete poem composed by American author Edgar Allan Poe. Like many of Poe’s poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. In my opinion, “Annabel Lee” is Poe’s most hauntingly beautiful poem. The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are envious. He retains his love for her after her death. There has been debate over who, if anyone, was the inspiration for “Annabel Lee.” Though many women have been suggested, Poe’s wife Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe is one of the more credible candidates. For whoever was the inspiration, it is obvious that Poe truly loved her. Annabel Lee” was written in 1849 but not published until shortly after Poe’s death that same year.
Joe
The Closet Professor 