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Annabelle Lee~ Edgar Allan Poe

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Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven.

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Insanity From Humanity: Alexis Vail

There's a tear in our sanity,

A rip in our minds,  And the thing we call humanity, Is causing holes in our skies, Some call it uncanny, But I just call it stupid, We've all seen the campaigne, Though that too is now polluted,

We knew to turn the lights off, And not let the water run, We threw these ideas in a trough, And continued with our guns, This only starts wars,  On something they call terror, But we all just ignore, That was such a big error, By terror they mean religion, And its such a cultural matter Though for not protecting the children, Future generations will be all but tattered, We should have reduced, reused, and recycled Those are the three major "R's", That we cant afford to abuse, But we sit in our cars, We should have taken the bus, Smoking cigars, Oh silly us, We are killing our earth, Along with our bodies, We have forgotten our hearth, While we all sit in lobbies, We are now so far along, Where do we even start? Start to pick up all the pieces, Of everything we've torn apart, You would think that we'd be thankful, For atleast we have a choice, But we've been taught to be so disgraceful, That we throw back at people who don't have a voice, Now I don't have the answer, But this is called denial, We are giving ourselves cancer, Regardless of the while, We'll just go down this road, Continue straight down the line, Are we sure this is where we want to go? Because in this path we all die.

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Allan (by denej)

My Flickr. My photo :)

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I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

Edgar Allan Poe (via lipstick-lullabiesx)

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Edgar Allan Poe Prejudices: First Series Henry Louis Mencken New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1919

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"A Dream Within A Dream" Poem Meaning

     I believe this poem is Poe coming to terms with his mortality and maybe also losing faith in God or at least questioning God. In the first two lines, Poe is saying farewell to life, his immortality. I disagree with the interpretation that Poe is saying goodbye to a lover. He is giving a kiss on the brow, not the lips or the cheek. It seems a more "general" farewell. He goes on to say, "you are not wrong, who deem, that my days have been a dream." It seems to me that he is talking not to just one person, but to everyone. 

     In the second stanza, nonexistence is given the form of the ocean, and his days (or time in general, as sand is often a metaphor for time in poems) are grains of sand, that he is powerless to stop from slipping away. I think here he wanted to give the impression and image of a floor of a piece of water, such as an ocean. The waves of nonexistence are stealing his days, and will eventually take all of them. 

     Even though he has accepted the fact of his mortality in the first stanza, he still fights it in the second, pleading with God (if he exists) to save him, to let him know that his life will not pass into the "deep" of nothingness. He tries to hold on to just one grain of sand; just one moment in time that will stretch forever and save him from his impending death. He wants to believe and have hope again that his existence is not just a dream and has purpose, so instead of stating it like at the end of the first stanza, in desperation he asks it as a question in the second. 

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Edgar Allan Poe: Short Biography

Poe's Childhood

   Edgar Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. His parents were David Poe and Elizabeth Arnold (Poe). David and Elizabeth got married in 1805 after the death of her first husband. Edgar is one of three children. 

     Elizabeth Poe died in 1811, when Edgar was 2 years old. After her death, he was sent to live with his grandparents and was later adopted by John Allan and his wife Frances.      When Poe was 6, he went to school in England for 5 years. He learned Latin and French, as well as math and history. He later returned to school in America and continued his studies. Edgar went to the University of Virginia in 1826 at the age of 17. He started to drink heavily and quickly became in debt. He had to quit school less than a year later.

Poe in the Army

     Edgar Allan had no money, no job skills, and had been shunned by John Allan. Edgar went to Boston and joined the U.S. Army in 1827 at the age of 18. He attained the rank of sergeant major. In 1829, Frances Allan died and John Allan tried to be friendly towards Edgar and signed Edgar's application to West Point.

     While waiting to enter West Point, Edgar lived with his grandmother and his aunt, In 1830, he entered West Point as a cadet. He didn't stay long because John Allan refused to send him any money. 

A Struggling Writer

     In 1831, Edgar Allan Poe went to New York City where he had some of his poetry published. He submitted stories to a number of magazines and they were all rejected. Poe was in financial trouble, so he sent a letter to John Allan begging for help but none came. John Allan died in 1834 and did not mention Edgar in his will.

     In 1835, Edgar finally got a job as an editor of a newspaper because of a contest he won with his story, "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle". In 1836, Edgar married his cousin, Virginia. He was 27 and she was 13.       Poe left the paper in early 1836, complaining of the poor salary. In 1837, Edgar went to New York. He wrote "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" but he could not find any financial success. He moved to Philadelphia in 1838 where he wrote "Ligeia" and "The Haunted Palace". His first volume of short stories, "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque" was published in 1839. Poe received the copyright and 20 copies of the book, but no money.      Edgar tried to start a magazine called The Stylus and failed. In 1843, he published some booklets containing a few of his short stories but they didn't sell well enough. He won a hundred dollars for his story, "The Gold Bug" and sold a few other stories to magazines but he barely made enough money to support his family.

     In 1845, Edgar Poe became an editor at The Broadway Journal. A year later, the Journal ran out of money and Poe was out of a job. He and his family moved to a small cottage near what is now East 192nd Street. Virginia died in 1847, 10 days after Edgar's birthday. After losing his wife, Poe collapsed from stress but gradually returned to health later that year.

Final Days

     In June of 1849, Poe left New York and went to Philadelphia. He renewed a boyhood romance with Sarah Royster Shelton and planned to marry her in October. 

     On October 3, Poe was found at Gunner's Hall, a public house at 44 East Lombard Street, after considered missing and was taken to the hospital. He lapsed in and out of consciousness but was never able to explain exactly what happened to him. Edgar Allan Poe died in the hospital on Sunday, October 7, 1849.

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