The Slender Poe Anthology Read Free

Carnival , or Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz strikes me as a sound idea. Seek out the piano music of these poets and see for yourself. “Let the poet press his finger steadily upon each key,” writes Poe, “and imagine each prolonged series of undulations the history, of joy or of sorrow…”
    I like to think of Poe as nearly always the brightest one in the room, and capable of doing anything well to which he set his mind. But there was one thing he was not capable of doing well, and that was drinking. Alcohol had a savage and deleterious effect on Poe; it damaged his career and undermined his health, though truly he’s far from the only American poet, actor, artist or writer who has battled the bottle. Poe didn’t drink all the time, but when he did, he was his own worst enemy.
    Nevertheless, I like to think Fanny Osgood had it right. A popular poet of the day with whom Poe carried on a brief literary romance during his period of celebrity in the salons of New York, she writes in her memoir, “To a sensitive and delicately nurtured woman, there was a peculiar and irresistible charm in the chivalric, graceful and almost tender reverence with which he invariably approached all women who won his respect.”
    I like to think of Poe as a pioneer at the penumbra of consciousness, scouting nebulous frontiers. Using the ancient form of the dialogue, Poe scripts voices from the other side of death. One of the shaman’s traditional functions was to fly into the invisible world and listen to the ancestors. Poe carries us elsewhere, beyond The Mighty X.
    In the preface to the last volume of his poetry published in his lifetime, The Raven and Other Poems (1845), Poe writes, “With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence…” Today it is likely that we have a more flexible and fluid sense of what poetry is than in Poe’s time; but passion remains a key to all artistic endeavor. I like what Poe says in an early and crucial review:
    If, indeed, there be any one circle of thought distinctly and palpably marked out from the jarring and tumultuous chaos of human intelligence, it is that evergreen and radiant Paradise which the true poet knows, and
    knows alone, as the limited realm of his authority—as the circumscribed Eden of his dreams.

    â€œMozart declared on his death-bed,” writes Poe in a Marginalia from July 1849, “that he ‘began to see what may be done in music…’” With three months to live, I imagine Poe was also beginning to glimpse what may be done in poetry. Certainly, the totality of his work continues to call us into the future.

    This collection intends to put Poe in a fresh slant of light; I’ve mixed the poems and tales to create a novel arrangement that has its own distinctive narrative. It begins with a love that absolves and ends with a transfigured “new man.” I’ve chosen the poems that are to me the strongest, while selecting some of the lesser-known tales that deserve more attention. From his longing and loss, from his detections and dreams, Poe fashioned “a palace of imagination.” With luck, you hold a key to it in your hands.
    Ideally it would be best to have a pair of these Slender Poe anthologies, so you can read aloud Poe’s words with someone else, perhaps alternating paragraphs or stanzas, marveling at his language and vision. If that were to be the case, no doubt, his spirit surely would join the both of you.

    First published in a special Christmas edition of The Gift in 1841, Eleonora was composed during a period of domestic stability with Poe’s wife and her mother. Beautifully crafted both musically and imagistically, it is something of a fairytale for those who have left youth behind. It has one of the best opening paragraphs in all of Poe, and many of his opening paragraphs are among the discrete treasures of American literature. This