1.
A
Pauper
2.
A
Madman
3.
A
pedophile
Nor was he a joke. Did he marry his
thirteen year old “cousin”? Yes, though they were not honestly, by blood,
related. Allan was the name of his father and Poe was the name of his
step-father, who did not disdain him for dropping out of West Point Military
Academy to be a writer. He did, in fact, decide to honor both sides of the
family by listing his name as such: Allan Poe. As for the thirteen year old, he
made the marriage at his surrogate Aunt’s behest, a practice not uncommon in
those days. Why? Because he was a world-renowned poet. Also a best-selling
author and inventor of both the psychological horror story and the detective tale.
He had four houses. Even today, I think there are parents, many living in the
south, who would have sold their
daughters to him, much less given the daughters away in marriage. Otherwise, by
today’s standards he would have been a wealthy degenerate, but he did not live
in the confines of today’s standards,
did he? No, instead he is painted as a lunatic genius and half-joke perpetuated
by an ass named Griswold. I relate to Poe due to the fact that I have my own
Griswolds—Kelly Knox and “Wild” Clyde—to contend with.
What the fuck are they so afraid of?
Back to Poe—one popular film which I will
not name due to its pure suck factor claimed Poe wrote “The Raven” while strung
out on coke at the age of 45. The fact is that Poe did not even live to that
age. He died at 40 of toxoplasmosis. The fact is he wrote “The Raven” at 35, and
not due to cocaine, or even alcohol, as Hollywood would have us believe. Said
other Hollywood farce painted him as a drunk whose only chance at
self-redemption was to solve crimes committed in relation to his tales. While a
decent movie, it is still a farce and nothing more. Poe, as the movie would
have us believe, never had to fight to publish a damn thing. In fact, not to publish Poe was considered a
mistake by any House.
What many also do not know is that other
than horror and detective tales, or macabre poems, he also wrote humor and
sentiment. The humor falls short, the sentiment is decent such as poems like “Sonnet—To
My Mother”. Now, while these works fall short of poems like “The Conqueror Worm”
or my favorite tale “Hop-Frog”, they still have impact. For example, the
sentiment written toward his drug of choice—not alcohol, but opium:
“My 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.”
Anyone who has been addicted to opiates
can see right through these lines. The pain, shakes, and loss of bowel control;
the dirtiest things of humanity slip away at the slightest whisper of junk.
“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.”
“For Annie” is not for a woman. It is
for an anodyne, like opium tinctures, of which Poe was much fonder than he was
of alcohol. I will not reveal the entire poem—read it for your own self. As an
ex-heroin addict I can tell you that this appearance of smiling death is quite
common of those who have received a fresh opium fix.
The sad truth of Poe is this: his wife
died vomiting blood from tuberculosis and drove him into the depths of despair.
Sometimes he fell into the hole within the page that only writers know about—others
he fell into his love for cats. I think he knew somehow that they would kill him
with their pissings, and he wrote “The Black Cat” as a testament to his oncoming
doom. Whatever the case, he embraced his doom, a bravery which many men fear or
despise out of their fear. Poe was neither necrophile nor ghoul as Griswold
would have us believe. He was a tortured soul whose only sin was drowning in
Laudanum and keeping many ammonia-pissing felines. He is forever missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment