Quoth the raven, "Nevermind."

I'm so glad to be better. A strange illness, this pneumonia was. I still have pain in my lungs when I take a very deep breath, and do you know, I still have some soreness where I got those shots. It really messes with you, on so many levels, too. You stay at home for a month, and you get cabin fever. You finally get to go out, and you're exhausted. You finally get back to a routine that you desperately missed, and then, bang! you miss not just having nothing to do but veg. It's defeating. But papers won't write themselves, much, and there's several good films to see. Life has to resume.

I'm still tired though, and I can't talk for very long without starting to sound like an eldery Italian man. That's a relief, I'm sure, to many.

Oh, and nightmares! I don't know anyone who dreams like I do. Anyone? I have, like, at least three lucid dreams a week. No wonder I'm tired.

Life: Yes! I'm still practicing the guitar. Eight Days a Week sounds nice! My fingers are cracking again, but it's good, so maybe it's like they're crackalacking!

And reading: Yes! Let's talk about Poe. I know what you're thinking, the girl who used to wear black lipstick is going to write about Poe...yawn. No! Well, yes, I did try to be a goth, but man, I really couldn't pull it off. I looked like an idiot, but who didn't -- the 90s were so who cares and no middle ground and cute is even not cute, and I just can't believe I thought I looked good. Thanks, Courtney Love.

Edgar Allen Poe appeals to me on all kinds of Gorey levels. I love his psuedo-mystic-ness. He's like the gypsy woman who is all smoke and mirrors and is really stealing your wallet while you're fascinated by visions of doom. Honestly, I can't follow much of his work. I've never read any Poe critics, but I can't imagine anyone can read his stories without mass confusion. But his poetry...ahhh. I love the madness and force of his poetry. The man has his way with image.

Let's do the Raven.

I love the beginning of this poem. He establishes such a repore with the audience -- comfy in a chair at night, reading, nodding off. Also -- the narrator is recalling this, like remembering a personal myth. Ohh, I like that -- Poe and the Personal Myth (MFA, please.)

Poe's poetry is so confessional. and the narrator of the raven is immediately your best friend. He (for the sake of continuity -- he) offers up a very personal piece of information -- that he is grieving -- and therefore leaves himself totally vulnerable. Plus, this character is wrought with anxiety -- he has to convince himself over and over that the tapping is real, and that the rustling of the curtains is ominous -- but that everything is okay, it's just a visitor. But, of course, it's not a visitor -- line 24 tells us that it is "darkness...and nothing more." Then he wispers "Lenore" and the whisper is echoed back somehow. Interestingly, "Lenore," the character that the narrator is presumably mourning, is only named this by angels, on earth, or "here," she has no name, "for evermore." I originally wondered at this, questioning whether or not the angels re-named her -- but after several rereads I imagine that the point is that it is only angels that converse with her, since she is is no longer in or of the earth. But what of this darkness? I wonder if, before this poem, the cliche of hearing a noise outside, then going to the door to investigate said noise, throwing open the door, and finding nothing but the night spread out before you, was even much of a concept? Poe doesn't say, "the night" though, does he. He says, the darkness. Way more sinister, way more villanesque, way more creepy.

What of the echo? This is a man who is waiting for a dead woman to come back to him. He is Heathcliff shouting "Haunt me!" although I think of Heathcliff as a big meanie, and Poe as a waif. Besides the point. The echo, I believe, is mental. I don't know about you good people, but the thought of hearing voices is probably one of the larger fears in my repertoire. So I have an idea of what hearing voices might be like, and I'm sure much of my idea stems from various episodes of the Twillight Zone, but whispers are right up there, and a murmur is quite terrifying. This is a grieving narrator who is really entertaining some schizophrenia -- but it is too indulged, the reader questions sanity, but so does the narrator, and someone, I tell you, is getting their wallet lifted.

And what is the falseness, the scam? It's lines like this, "fantastic terrors never felt before" and "dreams no mortal ever dared dream before." This is niave. He's trying to build up a tension so that we can prepare ourselves to see a bride-zombie, then be curiously surprised by a blackbird. Really? Really, E? So in comes this antcy raven, and he perches on a bust of Athena. So, who has a bust of Athena OVER their front door? (But that raises a question -- where is this room? if the door is opened, and there is only darkness, and the curtains (purple, no less) rustle oddly, where is this room? It could be anywhere, and there is at least a chair in it, and a fireplace, a door, a window, a bust, curtains, and books. I see it as this room that stands suspended in space, out of time.)

The sight of the raven almost kills the energy of the poem. Soon after the narrator acts all brought back down to earth, and jokes with the little birdie, asking its name. It's name is Nevermore. There's obviously a red flag when the narrator says that this word/Name has "little meaning...little relevancy." So many of Poe's characters are self-deceiving. They imagine they are doing no harm when they are committing atrocities, they see no consequence is behaving cruelly, and then they are confronted by some undeniable force that condemns them and seals their fate. Poe was quite a hopeless fellow. The narrator of The Raven is certainly punished for thinking that this bird's name is meaningless. Following his deduction of the raven and his quoth, the narrator expresses a backwards hope that the raven will take off, but the raven repeats, Nevermore. He imagines that the raven belongs to someone else -- some other tragic figure, but, sadly, no. The narrator finally decides that the raven is an oracle, but one who can only say Nevermore -- by coincidence or providence, so he asks the only questions that he doesn't have the answer to, if he shall ever be united with Lenore...and the raven tells him that he will
1. Never forget Lenore or be free of his memory of her.
2. Never be "cured".
3. Never reunite with Lenore.
plus, the raven adds that it will never leave the narrator. And there's doom in a nutshell. The narrator's soul is now permanently in residence inside the shadow of a hopeless (or just really slow moving and brainless parrotting) raven.

I think there is something pretty heavy going on here. The story is interesting enough. I think Blythe had us investiage Gnosticism and it's bearing on Poe and his poetry -- and there is something to the idea of merging male and female aspects of the psyche until they form a perfect union which results in a union with God. The raven can be seen as how the ego -- namely fear, inhibits one from ever experiencing such a union. So much of Poe's work is seen as the power of belief -- Ligeia, for example -- and how fear is the ultimate weakness and hinderance to enlightenment. Also the notion that the raven is lying is so Miltonian -- if the raven, overshadowing Athena, female wisdom, is Satan corrupting Eve, is the narrator going to give in to this deception? It doesn't look good. The raven is a great symbol for the corrupting domination of the sacred female. The narrator has succumbed to its influence, by giving up hope of Lenore. He wants to merge his spirit (sacred male) with Lenore's (sacred female) but since she isn't physically present, he has lost all hope.

Lest we all succumb to Nevermore! Dreadful!