Alone
By Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ‘round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—

About the Poem

Edgar Allan Poe’s early life was full of tragedy and by the time this poem is thought to have been written, despite his relatively young age, he had experienced a large amount of loss. Poe wrote “Alone” in 1829, shortly after the death of his foster mother, Frances Allan. The poem was not titled or published in Poe’s lifetime but was discovered after his death and published posthumously in 1875. Known for his darker-themed works, it perhaps makes sense in this context that where others see a blue sky, he often struggled to see past the “demon in his view.”

“Alone” is believed to be autobiographical. The narrator perceives his life and emotions differently to others which has led to him feeling isolated. In the poem, he is questioning why he sees things so differently. The major theme of “Alone” is of feeling isolated, seen as different, and being misunderstood. The beauty and irony of these feelings is one that many people can relate to, and the very act of expressing these feelings through poetry connects Poe with others who feel the same. Poe feels his intense imaginative life is a curse, forever setting him apart from other people. But it’s also a blessing, the source of his visionary power.

About the Poet

Along with Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe is one of my favorite poets. As with Frost, what might seem to be a simple and straightforward poem has a lot more complexity. Poe always felt he was different, and he struggled to fit in. Poe mostly handled these feelings with destructive behavior, while Dickinson handles her feelings by being a recluse. All three poets expressed their feelings eloquently in their poems. While Frost is not usually known for darker themes like Poe is, he did write a few poems that make you contemplate your own mortality and the choices we make in life. Dickinson has many of the dark themes of Poe, though she is not primarily known for them. Her most famous poem, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” is definitely one of her more morbid prose.

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston. Poe’s father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and, later, to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave the university when Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts.

Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan deteriorated. In 1827, Poe moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems (George Redway) was published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (Hatch & Dunning). Neither volume received significant critical or public attention. Following his Army service, Poe was admitted to the United States Military Academy, but he was again forced to leave for lack of financial support, and because he may have been kicked out for showing up at formation naked among other mischievous events. He then moved into the home of his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter, Virginia, in Baltimore.

Poe began to sell short stories to magazines at around this time, and, in 1835, he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, where he moved with his aunt and cousin Virginia. In 1836, he married Virginia, who was thirteen years old at the time. Over the next ten years, Poe edited a number of literary journals including the Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City. It was during these years that he established himself as a poet, a short story writer, and an editor. He published some of his best-known stories and poems, including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Raven.” 

After Virginia’s death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe’s lifelong struggle with depression and alcoholism worsened. He returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of “acute congestion of the brain.” Evidence by medical practitioners who reopened the case has shown that Poe may have been suffering from rabies.

Poe’s work as an editor, poet, and critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit him as the “architect” of the modern short story. He was also one of the first critics to focus primarily on the effect of style and structure in a literary work; as such, he has been seen as a forerunner to the “art for art’s sake” movement. Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature.

October
By Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

In this poem, the American-born poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) considers the state of nature on an October morning, asking that nature beguile him and his fellow humans into believing things are not hastily moving to a state of waste and ruin by slowing down the process of decay and demise that October brings, with the falling leaves and harsh winds. Frost uses October, the autumn season, and its natural beauty to portray his idea. He then suddenly changes to the winter season following it, to show the genuine fondness of the magnificence and that each moment should be experienced to the fullest.

Compensation
By James Edwin Campbell

O, rich young lord, thou ridest by
With looks of high disdain;
It chafes me not thy title high,
Thy blood of oldest strain.
The lady riding at thy side
Is but in name thy promised bride.
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

Her father wills and she obeys,
The custom of her class;
’Tis Land not Love the trothing sways—
For Land he sells his lass.
Her fair white hand, young lord, is thine,
Her soul, proud fool, her soul is mine,
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

No title high my father bore;
The tenant of thy farm,
He left me what I value more:
Clean heart, clear brain, strong arm
And love for bird and beast and bee
And song of lark and hymn of sea,
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

The boundless sky to me belongs,
The paltry acres thine;
The painted beauty sings thy songs,
The lavrock lilts me mine;
The hot-housed orchid blooms for thee,
The gorse and heather bloom for me,
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

About the Poem

Campbell was among the first African-American poets to write in the African-American vernacular dialect. “Compensation” is one of his poems in which he did not use the African-American vernacular dialect. His first book, Driftings and Gleanings, a volume of poetry and essays in standard American English, was published in 1887.

In “Compensation,” Campbell uses the image of a young lord riding around observing his serfs. It is an analogy for the sharecropping system developed in the South after the American Civil War. After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping, a system where the landlord/planter allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop. This encouraged tenants to work to produce the biggest harvest that they could and ensured they would remain tied to the land and unlikely to leave for other opportunities. 

Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, just as sharecropping was. It developed during the Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century. Unlike slaves but similar to sharecroppers, serfs could not be bought, sold, or traded individually though they could, depending on the area, be sold together with land.

“Compensation” is a contrast between the “young lord” who believes he is above it all and intimidates all those who live on his land. In the poem, land is the most important thing to the young lord, it is how he keeps his aristocratic lifestyle. In the South, the planters had lost all of their free labor and were at risk of losing their status at the top of Southern society. The young lord is said to “ridest by/ With looks of high disdain.” He shows his power over people with his haughtiness.

Campbell though points out how even though bonded by sharecropping, the black tenant farmers were still better off than when they were slaves, though in actuality that is debatable. They weren’t owned, but their debts were, and sharecropping became a form of debt bondage. Cambell’s speaker in the poem says that while he was not left land by his father like the young lord, he did have a “clean heart, clear brain, strong arm.”

I think the picture above is a nice complement to the poem. It reminds me of the folktale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The story is about a vain emperor who gets exposed before his subjects. His vanity causes the emperor to be a naked fool to his subjects. In the poem, the young lord is also vain and believes he is above all others, but his “subjects” have something he does not have, a “clean heart, clear brain, strong arm.”

About the Poet

James Edwin Campbell was born on September 28, 1867, in Pomeroy, Ohio. He graduated from Pomeroy Academy in 1884. While still in school, he began to write poetry and stories in dialect. 

A poet, essayist, and educator, Campbell published two books in his lifetime: Driftings and Gleanings (State Tribune, 1887), a compilation of poems and essays; and Echoes from the Cabin and Elsewhere (Donohue & Henneberry, 1895), a full collection of poetry.

Campbell taught for two years at Buck Ridge, near Gallipoli, Ohio, and became involved in Republican politics in his state. He then ventured into journalism, writing for the West Virginia-based newspaper, Pioneer. He left the paper to return to education. Campbell led Langston School in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and, from 1892–94, became the first president of West Virginia Colored Institute (now, West Virginia State College). In the mid-1890s, Campbell moved to Chicago and wrote for the Chicago Times-Herald, while publishing poems in other periodicals. 

Campbell died on January 26, 1896, of typhoid pneumonia while visiting his parents for Christmas. He published his last poem, “Homesick,” on December 7, 1895, in the Chicago Conservator. It was reprinted in an Ohio newspaper.

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 – 1822

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

In antiquity, Ozymandias (Ὀσυμανδύας) was a Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. Shelley began writing his poem in 1817, soon after the announcement of the British Museum’s acquisition of a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II from the thirteenth century BC, leading some scholars to believe that Shelley was inspired by this. The 7.25-ton fragment of the statue’s head and torso had been removed in 1816 from the mortuary temple of Ramesses at Thebes by Italian adventurer Giovanni Battista Belzoni. It was expected to arrive in London in 1818, but did not arrive until 1821. Shelley wrote the poem in friendly competition with his friend and fellow poet Horace Smith (1779–1849), who also wrote a sonnet on the same topic with the same title. Smith’s poem was published in The Examiner a few weeks after Shelley’s sonnet. Both poems explore the fate of history and the ravages of time: even the greatest men and the empires they forge are impermanent, their legacies fated to decay into oblivion.

Ozymandias
Horace Smith, 1779-1849

In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows:-
‘I am great OZYMANDIAS,’ saith the stone,
‘The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
‘The wonders of my hand.’- The City’s gone,-
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,-and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

A central theme of “Ozymandias” is the inevitable decline of leaders of empires and their pretensions to greatness. The name “Ozymandias” represents a rendering in Greek of a part of Ramesses’ throne name, User-maat-re Setep-en-re. The sonnet paraphrases the inscription on the base of the statue, given by Diodorus Siculus in his Bibliotheca historica as “King of Kings am I, Ozymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.”

The Journey
By Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

About the Poem

“The Journey” by Mary Oliver is a poem that focuses on the need to leave behind what is bad and wrong and harmful and start out on a new path. It has become a popular poem for those seeking guidance and strength in their lives. Oliver is best known for her poems on nature. So, “The Journey” is different from most of her poems in that it is more involved with the life of a person who is struggling to find meaning in a relationship and with themselves. The references to the natural world are few and distant – this poem is about the necessity for change, leaving one dark situation and finding another that is more positive. This person who, one day, finally knew what they had to do, is someone who is coming in from the cold, into the light from the dark, re-joining the world of the whole, finding their own voice, no longer a broken individual.

The journey tells of a person who has waited a long time for this day to arrive when they are about to start on a journey out of the dark past and into a brighter future. Despite those voices from any number of people trying to drag them back, giving their “bad advice” as loudly as they could, the poet had made up their mind out of necessity. Note the use of the house which is a symbol of the self, how it was made to tremble, that is, how close this person came to completely collapsing. It’s not a home but an empty person. And the voices are powerful because they represent negative energy, old patterns that this person had to break out of.

In a repeat of the opening line, the speaker clearly declares determinedly that “you know what you had to do.” There is no looking back, no stopping, no chance of holding onto that past life. However, the wind is still at you, trying to destroy and undermine you. The person set off in the day but now it is night and chaos still might rule. This is the chaotic energy of the past still attempting to stop the new progress and end this journey voices are not enough to cause a halt. The poem tells us that we cannot cling to the past, we cannot afford to dwell on what has gone.

In the final dozen lines of the poem, the transition is nearly complete, ready for the next phase. Stars are visible once again, but the cloud cover is not strong enough to diminish their light. Stars, what the old navigators used, now you can use. The voice that had been drowned out by those negative false calls for help is renewed. And it is strong, and it is yours alone.

The emphasis is on coming back into the world following what has been a challenging, chaotic, and terrifying experience. To be able to listen again to that inner voice of wisdom and truth, a sort of companion throughout the ordeal. At the last moment, in the nick of time, before it was too late, the speaker (the person, ‘you’) began the journey and overcame the obstacles both real and imagined.

About the Poet

Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild. It is characterized by a sincere wonderment at the impact of natural imagery conveyed in unadorned language. In 2007, she was declared to be the country’s best-selling poet.

The Imaginal Stage
By D. A. Powell

turns out
there are more planets than stars
more places to land
than to be burned

I have always been in love with
last chances especially
now that they really do
seem like last chances

the trill of it all upending
what’s left of my head
after we explode

are you ready to ascend
in the morning I will take you
on the wing

About This Poem

“An imago is, for many winged insects, the final form of its metamorphosis. The plural of imago is imagines, and this time in the insect’s life is called the imaginal stage. The insect at this point has reached sexual maturity and has also earned its wings.” —D. A. Powell

About The Poet

D. A. Powell was born in Albany, Georgia, on May 16, 1963. He attended Sonoma State University, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1991 and his master’s in 1993. He received his MFA degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1996.

Powell is the author of the trilogy of books Cocktails (Graywolf Press, 2004), which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Lunch (Wesleyan University Press, 2000), and Tea (Wesleyan University Press, 1998). His poetry collection Chronic(Graywolf Press, 2009) received the Kingsley Tufts Award and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent books are Repast: Tea, Lunch, Cocktails (Graywolf Press, 2014) and Useless Landscape, or a Guide for Boys: Poems(Graywolf Press, 2012).

Powell’s subjects range from movies, art, and other trappings of contemporary culture to the AIDS pandemic. Powell’s work often returns to AIDS; his first three collections have been called a trilogy about the disease. As Carl Phillips wrote in his judge’s note for Boston Review’s Annual Poetry Award for Powell’s work, “No fear, here, of heritage nor of music nor, refreshingly, of authority. Mr. Powell recognizes in the contemporary the latest manifestations of a much older tradition: namely, what it is to be human.”

Powell has received a Paul Engle Fellowship from the James Michener Center, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America, among other awards.

Powell has taught at Columbia University, the University of Iowa, Sonoma State University, and San Francisco State University and served as the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Poetry at Harvard University. He currently teaches at the University of San Francisco.

At the Touch of You
By Witter Bynner

At the touch of you,
As if you were an archer with your swift hand at the bow,
The arrows of delight shot through my body.

You were spring,
And I the edge of a cliff,
And a shining waterfall rushed over me.

About the Poet

“At the Touch of You” is presented in two tercets of irregular free verse with a theme of romantic love. The imagery in the first stanza is evocative of Greek mythology. The second stanza uses the image of a waterfall to create a beautiful metaphor. What drew me into this poem was the first line: “At the touch of you.” Most poems begin with mentioning the sight of the poet’s lover and describe their outer appearance, but Bynner instead felt his rush of emotions not when he saw his love, but when his lover touched him.

I feel like he is describing how it feels when his lover’s makes love to him. Without much doubt, this poem is very erotic. He touches him and as he enters him, his “arrow of delight” shoots through his body setting him off an erotic journey as his lover’s touch travels across his body setting him on an erotic edge of that cliff that brings him just to the edge of orgasm before that orgasm comes and rushes over him like a “shining waterfall.” That is quite an orgasm that is as powerful as a waterfall engulfing his body. 

About the Poet

Witter Bynner was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1881. He graduated from Harvard University in 1902. After college, he worked as a newspaper reporter and, later, as the assistant editor of McClure’s magazine.

Bynner published his first poetry collection, An Ode to Harvard (Small, Maynard, & Co.), in 1907. He was also the author of New Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1960); Take Away the Darkness (Alfred A. Knopf, 1947); The Beloved Stranger (Alfred A. Knopf, 1919); Tiger (M. Kennerley, 1913); and several other poetry collections.

Bynner was also known for his works in translation, including The Way of Life According to Laotzu: An American Version (John Day Co., 1944), and a literary biography, Journey with Genius: Recollections and Reflections Concerning the D. H. Lawrences (J. Day Co, 1951).

In 1916, Bynner and Arthur David Ficke published Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments, under the pseudonyms Emanuel Morgan and Anne Krish. The book included poems and a manifesto on “spectrism,” a parody of Imagism. In 1918, Bynner admitted that the book was a hoax.

In 1922, Bynner settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his partner, Robert Hunt. He died there on June 1, 1968.

If You Must Hide Yourself From Love
By Christopher Salerno

It is important to face the rear of the train
as it leaves the republic. Not that all

departing is yearning. First love is
a factory. We sleep in a bed that had once

been a tree. Nothing is forgot.
Yet facts, over time, lose their charm,

warned a dying Plato. You have to isolate
the lies you love. Are we any less

photorealistic? I spot in someone’s Face-
book sonogram a tiny dictum

full of syllogisms. One says: all kisses come
down to a hole in the skull,

toothpaste and gin; therefore your eyes
are bull, your mouth is a goal.

About the Poem

“Love hurts, warned The Everly Brothers. Especially when we let passion trump reason. After all, as Plato suggests, there are any number of available ‘beds in nature’ to make one’s lovelife more complicated. As humans we struggle with the difference between physical, emotional, and intellectual love. Sometimes we simply need to bail out of the whole enterprise, and sometimes, after a great pain, we may need to censor it from our lives. To see sentimentality for what it is. Only then do we come back (to love) even stronger.”—Christopher Salerno

About the Poet

Christopher Salerno was born on June 13, 1975, in Somerville, New Jersey. He received an MA from East Carolina University and an MFA from Bennington College.

Salerno is the author of Sun & Urn (University of Georgia Press, 2017), winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize; ATM (Georgetown Review Press, 2014), winner of the Georgetown Review Poetry Prize; Minimum Heroic (Mississippi Review Press, 2010), winner of the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize; and Whirligig (Spuyten Duyvil, 2006).

In the judge’s citation for the Georgetown Review Poetry Prize, D. A. Powell writes, “Salerno rifles through our empty wallets to show how much we’re missing. These poems are mystical transactions of body and soul, as dark as Faust and as illuminating.”

Salerno has also received a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He currently serves as an editor at Saturnalia Books and teaches at William Paterson University. He lives in Caldwell, New Jersey.