Sunday, February 3, 2008

Because I haven't said enough judgmental things about American literature in this blog yet

I still hate Wallace Stevens. So much.

But actually, for once I have something positive to say, and it is this: I love Edgar Allan Poe. I really, really do. I love his poems and I love his stories. I have no doubt I would love his literary criticism. He writes like a dream and I love him. Mr. Poe, my deepest respects to you. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is one of the most perfect stories I've ever read.

When we were in high school and we were reading Poe, I was talking to tim about how good he was and the great virtuosity of his meter, particularly in "Annabel Lee", which sounds very nicely like waves crashing, and tim made a sniffy face and said it didn't sound like that at all and in fact it was just our imagination superimposing our own ideas on the meter, when indeed no such thing was happening, and Poe was very good but the meter thing was just people being silly. And I just wanted to say for the record, I disagree with that. Hooray for Poe and his meter.

I wish he hadn't been a crazy opium addict alcoholic asshole and child-bride-haver. We could have been BFF if not for all that stuff.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I must defend myself. I cannot believe I could have said that about our imaginations superimposing things on the meter. What in FACT I must have said was that the meter was singsongy and contrived and sounded silly to me. Which is not to say that I don't have a great affection for Poe - I do, but his poetry (oh God, a pun) just makes me want to jump rope.

Anonymous said...

Hey! Don't say bad things about Poe! that whole opium-alcohol thing was probably a completely false aspersion on his character. His symptoms were submitted as "John Doe" to a group of dignosticians and they came up with a completely different diagnosis - some brain thing. Ask House.

Jenny said...

You said that too, and took violent exception to the line about "ever dissever my soul from the soul"; however, you also said it was nothing like waves crashing. I remember the conversation completely distinctly: We talked about "Annabel Lee", and then we talked about "The Raven" and we reminisced about this substitute you had for English in seventh grade who said silly things about it, and then we talked about "El Dorado", which you also did not like, which lead to "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix", because I was curious about whether you thought meter ever sounded like something, and you agreed that that did indeed sound like cloppy horse hooves, and then I distracted you from the subject by telling you that Robert Browning (what a dear!) was born on my birthday.

SO.