Escaped Thoughts

Crescent, Oregon LoC

It's all about power

We need to correct some misinformation floating around campus. We didn’t take power away from the faculty senate. They never had any power.

— Associate Deans (@ass_deans) March 19, 2024

A Bad Move

“The story so far:
In the beginning, the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

—Douglas Adams

The Death of Edgar Allen Poe

Originally published at One-Page Schoolhouse

Edgar Allan Poe Daguerreotype probably taken in June 1849 in Lowell, Massachusetts

I suspect there is an uptick of web searches on Edgar Allan Poe around Halloween. That is too bad because this fascinating and misunderstood man should be better known for other things. I think people today think of him as an early days Stephen King, but he was a poet, critic and mystery writer too.

I am really surprised that no one has ever made a major movie biography about him. His death would be one of several mysterious parts of his story. That might be appropriate for someone considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre.

He was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, though he was hardly financially stable as a result.

Poe (age 26) obtained a license in 1835 to marry his cousin Virginia Clemm (age 13). That seems "wrong" today. In his time it was unusual but not rare. They were married for 11 years until her death. She certainly inspired some of his writing.

“Deep in earth my love is lying
And I must weep alone.”

On September 3, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found unconscious outside a tavern in Baltimore reportedly “in great distress and … in need of immediate assistance,” according to the man who found him.

We know that Poe had been traveling from Richmond to Philadelphia on a business trip. he made a stop in Baltimore on September 28 for an unknown reason. He was found on Lombard Street, outside Ryan’s Tavern, dressed in dirty and ill-fitting clothing. He was taken to Washington College Hospital, where he lapsed in and out of a coma until he died four days later on Sunday, October 7, 1849.

Unfortunately, he was not coherent long enough to explain how he came to be found or what had happened to him. The common story that he was an alcoholic and drank himself into a death stuporin doesn't match with him not recovering from a bad night after 4 days in the hospital.

Add to the mystery the report that in hospital he repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death. That has never been explained. I've read that his final words were the unsurprising "Lord help my poor soul." All of his medical records including his death certificate have been lost.

In newspaper accounts at the time, his death was described as "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation." Those vaguely medical terms were common euphemisms for death from disreputable causes such as alcoholism. We don't know his cause of death.

So, theories abound. All unproven and probably unprovable. Those theories include the DTs (delirium tremens via alcohol), heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, meningeal inflammation, cholera,[and rabies.

One theory that was put forward a few decades after his death was "cooping." Cooping was an alleged form of electoral fraud. Unwilling participants were forced to vote, often several times over, for a particular candidate in an election. Innocent bystanders would be grabbed off the street by "cooping gangs" working for a political candidate. They were drugged or forced to drink enough alcohol or sometimes beaten so that they were compliant and kept in a "coop" room (as in "chicken coop). They were then dragged to polling places, sometimes in disguises and different clothing and forced to vote multiple times.

But cooping stories are often questionable and though it might explain Poe's clothing and his state of mind, there is no evidence to prove this cause of death either.

Cooping was also a practice said to be done during the American Civil War to get men to enlist. Men were "cooped up", plied with alcohiol to the point of stupefaction, and tricked into enlisting.

It is unfortunate that Poe was found outside a tavern (which was a logical place to dump a cooped person) because alcohol became the cause. Poe was a drinker and drug user and in that time the temperance movement was building and so Poe’s death could be held up as example of the evils of alcohol.

Poe took up drinking back in his college days at the University of Virginia. He was sober for long periods but not sober consistently. he was supposed to have been an easy drunk in that after only a few drinks he would be insensible or ill. It was a disease with him and one he battled for most of his life.

Without an autopsy, there is no real chance of determining the cause of his death, but a more recent theory is that he died of rabies. Dr. R. Michael Benitez, a cardiologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center, thinks that rabies is a good possibility. In the final stages of the infection victims are combative, disoriented, and refuse water  (hydrophobia) which fits Poe at the end.

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, 

whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…” 
- from Poe's “Eleanora“

Here's the real tragedy that came after his death. He had a literary rival, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who wrote an obituary under a pseudonym that trashed Poe. It was full of lies and made him seem a madman. The long obituary appeared in the New York Tribune signed "Ludwig" on the day that Poe was buried and was reprinted across the country. It opened by saying, "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it."

Griswold was later outed as the writer of the obituary, and he was known to have held a grudge against Poe since 1842. I can find no explanation of this, but Griswold somehow became Poe's literary executor! Griswold convinced Poe's mother-in-law to sign away the rights to his works, and Griswold went on to publish the collected works attached with his own fabricated biography of Poe.

He continued to try to destroy Poe's reputation after his death. Griswold's obituary and the later memoir hurt Poe's reputation. It was denounced by those who knew Poe well, but the sensationalized, scandal-sheet version was one of the few "biographical" pieces at that time and it gained popular acceptance.

I have visited Poe's home and grave in Baltimore. The bar still stands where legend says Poe was last seen drinking before his death. That tavern is in Fell's Point, Baltimore. It is now known as "The Horse You Came in On.  I went there too and heard that a ghost whom they call "Edgar" haunts the rooms above. He was found just a few blocks away, so it's possible he drank there at some point that day, but this tavern visit is no more proven than the cause of Poe's death.

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. 

Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”

- from Poe's ”The Premature Burial”

Are you a poet?  You might want to try using one of the many writing prompts I have used on my Poets Online magazine site. 

If you are ready to try our latest prompt and call for submissions, you can submit for our next issue. The submission deadline is always the end of the month.

Take a look in our archive at some past issues - they go back to 1998, so there is plenty to examine. Maybe you're a reader more than a writer . Then just drop by to read.

How much the heart can hold

 

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

 

In the last minute of the world

 

IN THE LAST MINUTE OF THE WORLD

a daylily is opening beside tomorrow’s bud.

A robin tends her two hungry nestlings.

The sun emerges from behind a cloud.

Peppermint, thyme, and sage lose their perfume.

People outside, hugging, holding hands, and crying.

     by Kenneth Ronkowitz

Writing the Day - a poetry podcast

My podcasts of the poems on WRITING THE DAY are now in their third season (though season one was just a short time in 2021). The number of plays, followers, and streaming was all up in 2022, but that is not so impressive to me because I know that I only started the podcast in 2021 and the numbers were very low at the start.

Spotify tells me that the three most popular podcasted poems this year were This Garden of Earthly Delights, In the Last Minute of the World, and Napping in the Multiverse. I wish I could figure out why a poem rises to the top. The ones that do are usually not personal favorites.

The most streams were from September 4-10.

Spotify is the place most listeners go to though episodes are available on other platforms.

2023 is season 3 of podcasts but “season 10” of poems here since I began as a daily practice in 2014.

Approach of Winter

 

Approach of Winter
by William Carlos Williams

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together, 
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden.


William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey in 1883. A highly influential figure in twentieth-century poetry, he was the author of Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems and many other works. Williams was also a physician. He died in 1963.

Williams was known as an Imagist poet. “Imagism was born in England and America in the early twentieth century. A reactionary movement against romanticism and Victorian poetry, Imagism emphasized simplicity, clarity of expression, and precision through the use of exacting visual images.”    

 

Read more about the history of the Imagist movement.


  

 

Rachel Maddow with Marc Maron

Marc Maron sees Rachel Maddow on TV almost every night. But there was a time when they saw each other every day, back when they worked together at Air America Radio. Rachel and Marc talk about those early radio days which turned out to be a transitional point in both of their lives. Rachel also explains how her early days of AIDS activism and public policy studies eventually led her to the broadcasting career she has now, which is something she never imagined herself doing. They also discuss depression, prayer, self-confidence, and why she felt compelled to write her new book, Blowout.

listen via www.wtfpod.com

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true

“I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like Martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

The Great Perhaps

“Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

The point of marriage

“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

From the Sea, Into the Air

wing

Activating Your Brain's Healing Power

We are more likely to experience depression than our parents were.

Blame our automated, online world? How about the reduced physical effort we make to survive?

Neuroscientist Kelly Lambert finds compelling evidence that having to work hard for rewards significantly improves mood and prevents depression.

Mixing research from anthropology, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology, her theory suggests that physical effort directed toward tangible outcomes activates particular regions of the brain and builds resilience against the emotional emptiness and negative thinking associated with depression.

In other words, get out of your funk not by changing your mental activity and thoughts, but by physical activity.

She wrote Lifting Depression: A Neuroscientist's Approach to Activating Your Brain's Healing Power about her brain research into how using your hands-on crafts projects can be as beneficial to the body as taking psychoactive medication.

 

A poet is

“A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.”
― James Dickey

It's All Related

sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

― Marilyn Monroe

​

Where Have I Been?

On a desert and deserted island of my own making...

But now I am home and I will follow Charles Baudelaire's advice and

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”

everyone becomes a poet

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
Those who wish to sing always find a song.
At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
― Plato

Perhaps all the dragons

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses
who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything that frightens us is,
in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Begin Again

I unearthed this Typepad account today. I had forgotten it even existed but it turned up in a vanity search I did. I'm not sure when and why I started it and it seems to be mostly things from other places online. I think I moved to Tumblr to serve that purpose. 

Actually, so much of online - especially social sites - is recycled, reposted, and retweeted content. I have other blogs where I try to be original in my writing. Still, even when I'm being original in my words, the inspiration often comes from a book, an article, a photo, a podcast, or something I saw online.

I wasn't sure if Typepad even existed anymore - but here it is. So, perhaps I will begin again here one day. Not that I need more places to be online.

 

a motivating beverage popular in my home state of New Jersey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Endangered NJ

Looking at what has been lost or is in danger of being lost in New Jersey
http://endangerednj.blogspot.com

tidal pool

 

Sierra Club Radio - December 7, 2013

This week on Sierra Club Radio:

It's our 7th anniversary special featuring interviews from some of our favorite past guests: Tom Friedman, Ashley Judd, and Nick Kristoff.

Happy Birthday Sierra Club Radio!

via sierraclub.typepad.com