Re: The International Edgar Allan Poe Festival & Awards

Deluded denizens of Mobtown: Hear me:

This put on farce of celebrating Poe’s demise desecrates the memory of one of the greatest poets and thinkers America has ever produced. Edgar Allan Poe was not the ghoulish Halloween scribbler that your mindless acolytes believe he was. Poe on many occasions denounced the misconception bruited abroad that he was a “Gothic” writer.

On the contrary, Poe was a patriotic anti mob rule satirist. For example, he roasted the two United States Presidents of his time that brought on untold economic misery through their pernicious economic policies Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. (The same Van Buren who was a protégé of the traitorous founder of Chase Manhattan and assassin Aaron Burr.) Poe’s story The Gold Bug was a broadside against Jackson who was known at the time as THE Gold Bug. Jackson’s banning of the Second National Bank and resort to specie resumption brought down upon these shores monstrous economic misery. King Pest is a satire of Jackson’s mob rule politics where Andrew Jackson plays the role of the President presiding over the plague in the City of London. At the time, no literate reader could have missed the allusion Poe was making. The Devil in the Belfry in the story of that name was Martin Van Buren who was yet more perfidious than his predecessor Jackson. I could go on for quite some length in this vein but won’t belabor the point here. If you are interested visit my blog Thingumbobesquire@blogspot.com  In particular read the entry TheWorld of Edgar Allan Poe: The Poetic Principle.

 Yet now you who know nothing of your own history parade around as admirers of Poe as a grisly horror story writer. Poe is laughing at you all from the grave as it were with poetic irony in a poem I will leave you with: For Annie. (Which regrettably, I am afraid like the irony in everything he wrote will fall once again upon deaf ears.)

For Annie

Thank Heaven! the crisis-

The danger is past,

And the lingering illness

Is over at last-

And the fever called "Living"

Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know

I am shorn of my strength,

And no muscle I move

As I lie at full length-

But no matter!-I feel

I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,

Now, in my bed

That any beholder

Might fancy me dead-

Might start at beholding me,

Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,

The sighing and sobbing,

Are quieted now,

With that horrible throbbing

At heart:- ah, that horrible,

Horrible throbbing!

The sickness- the nausea-

The pitiless pain-

Have ceased, with the fever

That maddened my brain-

With the fever called "Living"

That burned in my brain.

And oh! of all tortures

That torture the worst

Has abated- the terrible

Torture of thirst

For the naphthaline river

Of Passion accurst:-

I have drunk of a water

That quenches all thirst:-

Of a water that flows,

With a lullaby sound,

From a spring but a very few

Feet under ground-

From a cavern not very far

Down under ground.

And ah! let it never

Be foolishly said

That my room it is gloomy

And narrow my bed;

For man never slept

In a different bed-

And, to sleep, you must slumber

In just such a bed.

My tantalized spirit

Here blandly reposes,

Forgetting, or never

Regretting its roses-

Its old agitations

Of myrtles and roses:

For now, while so quietly

Lying, it fancies

A holier odor

About it, of pansies-

A rosemary odor,

Commingled with pansies-

With rue and the beautiful

Puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,

Bathing in many

A dream of the truth

And the beauty of Annie-

Drowned in a bath

Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,

She fondly caressed,

And then I fell gently

To sleep on her breast-

Deeply to sleep

From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,

She covered me warm,

And she prayed to the angels

To keep me from harm-

To the queen of the angels

To shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly,

Now, in my bed,

(Knowing her love)

That you fancy me dead-

And I rest so contentedly,

Now, in my bed,

(With her love at my breast)

That you fancy me dead-

That you shudder to look at me,

Thinking me dead.

But my heart it is brighter

Than all of the many

Stars in the sky,

For it sparkles with Annie-

It glows with the light

Of the love of my Annie-

With the thought of the light

Of the eyes of my Annie. 

Postscript: I ambled down to the "event" yesterday and was really not impressed. Half the crowd were clueless "Goths" as expected. Next year I am considering setting up a booth to disabuse such an execrable and pervasively false narrative foisted upon us.