Edgar Allen Poe Quotes

We loved with a love that was more than love.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

And all I loved, I loved alone.

I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind

I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results.

I am an invisible man. No I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe: Nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids, and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, simply because people refuse to see me.

Every moment of the night Forever changing places And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces

Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.

Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.

You are not wrong who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of ANNABEL LEE; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea; But we loved with a love that was more than love- I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me- Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we- Of many far wiser than we- And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.

A Dream Within A Dream Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow- You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

Art is to look at not to criticize.

All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.

The sky was the color of Edgar Allen Poe's pajamas.

...that fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseperable from the perfection of the beautiful.

I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow.

Read this and thought of you: Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say. ~ Edgar Allen Poe

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man." ~ 'The Black Cat.

A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

the truth is, I am heartily sick of this life & of the nineteenth century in general. (I am convinced that every thing is going wrong.)

Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.

But you have to understand, mental illness is like cholesterol. There is is good kind and the bad. Without the good kind- less flavor to life. Van Gogh, Beethoven, Edgar Allen Poe, Sylvia Plath, Pink Floyd (the early Piper at the Gates of Dawn line up), scientific breakthroughs, spiritual revolution, utopian visions, zany nationalism that kills millions- wait, that’s the bad kind. Tim Dorsey (Hurricane Punch)

Once upon a midnight dreary

For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.

Dream dreams that no one ever dared to dream before.

I think Poe's quite good, actually. The whole casual horror thing. Like someone standing next to you and screaming their head off and you asking them what the fuck and them stopping for a moment to say 'Oh you know, I'm just afraid of death' and then they keep on with the screaming.

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this - that offenses against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made - not to understand - but to feel - as crime.

We loved with a love that was more than love.”—Edgar Allen Poe

The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,—not the material of my every-day existence--but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.

Eldorado Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. But he grew old— This knight so bold— And o’er his heart a shadow— Fell as he found No spot of ground That looked like Eldorado. And, as his strength Failed him at length, He met a pilgrim shadow— ‘Shadow,’ said he, ‘Where can it be— This land of Eldorado?’ ‘Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride,’ The shade replied,— ‘If you seek for Eldorado!

Tell me truly, I implore-- Is there-- is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!

I didn't even know a heart could beat so loudly...it reminds me of an Edgar Allen Poe story we had to read in one of our...classes...it's supposed to be a story about guilt and the dangers of civil disobedience, but when I first read it I thought it seemed kind of lame and melodramatic. Now I get it, though. Poe must have snuck out a lot when he was young.

In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed— But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted.—A Dream, Edgar Allen Poe

And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

Poe isn’t for everyone. He’s too heady a draught for that. He may not be for you. But there are secrets to appreciating Poe, and I shall let you in on one of the most important ones: read him aloud

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise? Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car? And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

We want characters - characters man - something novel - out of the way. We are wearied with everlasting sameness. Come drink! the wine will brighten your wits.

Bazı kitapları okurken yazarın düşüncelerine dalıp gideriz, bazılarını okurken de kendi düşüncelerimize.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” - Edgar Allen Poe

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” —Edgar Allen Poe

He who pleases is of more importance to his fellow man than he who instructs.

I Dwelt alone In a world of moan, And my soul was a stagnant tide, Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride- Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride Ah, less-less bright The stars of night Than the eyes of the radiant girl! And never a flake That the vapor can make With the moon-tints of purple and pearl, Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl- Can vie compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl Now Doubt-now Pain Come never again, For her soul gives me sigh for sigh, And all day long Shine, bright and strong, Astarte within the sky, While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye- While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

It is a happiness to wonder, it is a happiness to dream

Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee—be still.” SPIRITS OF THE DEAD —EDGAR ALLEN POE

By undue profundity, we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct. The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heartone of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man.

I assert, however, that much of our incredulity—as La Bruyere says of all our unhappiness—"vient de ne pouvoir être seuls.

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night.

To Helen I saw thee once-once only-years ago; I must not say how many-but not many. It was a july midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe- Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light Thier odorous souls in an ecstatic death- Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted by thee, by the poetry of thy prescence. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses And on thine own, upturn'd-alas, in sorrow! Was it not Fate that, on this july midnight- Was it not Fate (whose name is also sorrow) That bade me pause before that garden-gate, To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footstep stirred; the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh Heaven- oh, God! How my heart beats in coupling those two worlds!) Save only thee and me. I paused- I looked- And in an instant all things disappeared. (Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out; The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses' odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All- all expired save thee- save less than thou: Save only the divine light in thine eyes- Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. I saw but them- they were the world to me. I saw but them- saw only them for hours- Saw only them until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition!yet how deep- How fathomless a capacity for love! But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go- they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me- they lead me through the years. They are my ministers- yet I thier slave Thier office is to illumine and enkindle- My duty, to be saved by thier bright light, And purified in thier electric fire, And sanctified in thier Elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), And are far up in heaven- the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still- two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

The viol, the violet, and the vine. Resignedly beneath the sky

I do not suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.

Oh, lady bright! can it be right- The window open to the night? The wanton airs, from the tree-top, Laughingly through the lattice drop - The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, Flit through thy chamber in and out, And wave the curtain canopy So fitfully - so fearfully - Above the closed and fringéd lid 'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid, That, o'er the floor and down the wall, Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall! Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?

What kind of dark, twisted mind preys on young women? I think it was Poe that said the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical thing in the universe, and if that was true… I was John Milton.

تنها من از کودکی چنان نبوده ام که دیگران، چنان ندیده ام که دیگران؛ از بهاری همگانی نمی توانستم به هیجان درآیم چنانکه آن بهار مرا اندوهگین نیز نمی کرد و نمی توانستم قلبم را برای لذت بردن از آهنگ آن بیدار کنم. آنگاه در کودکی ام – در سپیده دم طوفانی ترین زندگی- که با همه ی خوشی ها و ناخوشی ها آمیخته شده بود، معمایی مرا به خود گرفتار کرد که هنوز هم نتوانسته ام خود را از چنبره اش رها کنم؛ از رود سیل آسا یا چشمه از سنگ سرخ کوه از آفتابی که در پاییز طلایی دور من می گردید از آذرخش آسمانی که پروار کنان از من عبور می کرد از طوفان و از کولاک و ابری که شکل یک شیطان را در نظرگاه من به خود گرفت (درحالیکه باقی جهنم به رنگ آبی بود)

From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were—I have not seen As others saw—I could not bring My passions from a common spring— From the same source I have not taken My sorrow—I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone— And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone— Then—in my childhood—in the dawn Of a most stormy life—was drawn From ev’ry depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still— From the torrent, or the fountain— From the red cliff of the mountain— From the sun that ’round me roll’d In its autumn tint of gold— From the lightning in the sky As it pass’d me flying by— From the thunder, and the storm— And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view—

The Bostonians are very well in their way. Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good. Their Common is no common thing - and the duck pond might answer - if its answer could be heard for the frogs.

And hither and thither fly--Mere puppets they, who come and go, At bidding of vast formless things, that shift the scenery to and fro.'" His voice was hushed and whispery in the earphones. "Mere puppets," he repeated. "It's Edgar Allen Poe." "So are we the vast formless things?" "Yep." I grinned up at him. "Are you calling me fat and unshapely?" His low laugh tickled my ears. "Quite the contrary," he said. "Jacob can be vast, and I shall be formless. Your form is very pleasing.

I could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty.

A martyr to a barburous realm equipped with gas fixtures, a flower that took on strange new colours because its roots had been dipped in poison. Baudelaire on Edgar Allen Poe

While doing an enquiry on renowned horror author, “Edgar Allen Poe” I was astonished to notice how more successful his biographical books sold compared to his own books.

Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway." -Edgar Allen Poe

I picked up my volume of Collected Stories and Poems by Edgar Allen Poe.  I sprawled across the bed and flipped through the pages until I came to one of my favorite short stories: “The Oval Portrait.

Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story in 1838 about a shipwreck and how three survivors killed and ate the third man, Richard Parker; in 1884, in real life, this actually happened to a man called Richard Parker.

Roger was like the Edgar Allen Poe of stupid people. He'd been making movies about women who were dead or dying, who didn't have much to say, for as long as his stringy hair had been ponytailed into a cliché.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,

They have not left me (as my hopes have) since; They follow me- they lead me through the years. They are my ministers- yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle- My duty, to be saved by their bright light, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire.

Un dessein si funeste, S'il n'est digne d'Atrée, est digne de Tyeste Such a mean plan is unworthy of Atreus, but totally worthy of Thyestes

With forms that no man can discover For the tears that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore

I sat, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old mans heart.

Tell me every terrible thing you ever did and let me love you anyway.

This book is a wonderful, refreshing, collection of thoughts. Remember, I am only here to guide, the words are the writer’s, not mine. Succinct snippets of wisdom, purely delightful to read.

For a while, every smart and shy eccentric from Bobby Fischer to Bill Gate was hastily fitted with this label, and many were more or less believably retrofitted, including Isaac Newton, Edgar Allen Pie, Michelangelo, and Virginia Woolf. Newton had great trouble forming friendships and probably remained celibate. In Poe's poem Alone, he wrote that "All I lov'd - I lov'd alone." Michelangelo is said to have written "I have no friends of any sort and I don't want any." Woolf killed herself. Asperger's disorder, once considered a sub-type of autism, was named after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger, a pioneer, in the 1940s, in identifying and describing autism. Unlike other early researchers, according to the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, Asperger felt that autistic people could have beneficial talents, especially what he called a "particular originality of thought" that was often beautiful and pure, unfiltered by culture of discretion, unafraid to grasp at extremely unconventional ideas. Nearly every autistic person that Sacks observed appeard happiest when alone. The word "autism" is derived from autos, the Greek word for "self." "The cure for Asperger's syndrome is very simple," wrote Tony Attwood, a psychologist and Asperger's expert who lives in Australia. The solution is to leave the person alone. "You cannot have a social deficit when you are alone. You cannot have a communication problem when you are alone. All the diagnostic criteria dissolve in solitude." Officially, Asperger's disorder no longer exists as a diagnostic category. The diagnosis, having been inconsistently applied, was replaced, with clarified criteria, in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; Asperger's is now grouped under the umbrella term Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD.

SENSORY AVOIDERS – SENSORY DEFENSIVENESS “And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?” -Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) Imagine a day inside Jenny’s skin. The morning alarm goes off and she startles, her heart races, her body tightens, her breathing quickens.  Her husband turns to get out of bed, grazing her foot, and she cringes, her bodily rhythms speed up another notch and her body tightens further. He sees that she seems annoyed about something and affectionately strokes her cheek. She bristles and, when he turns around, rubs where he touched her. She slowly arises to get out of bed, as she feels a bit dizzy, and quickly puts on her soft cotton house slippers, as the feel of the carpet makes her recoil, and walks into the bathroom. The bright lights her husband has left turned on assault her. Her eyes squint painfully. She quickly turns off the lights and turns on a small lamp on the sink counter. Her already overloaded system gets further destabilized. She starts to brush her teeth but the toothbrush is new and the bristles tickle her uncomfortably. She leans over to spit out the toothpaste and feels a sudden loss of balance and a surge of panic engulfs her. She steadies herself and turns on the shower. The soft spray of water from the showerhead feels like pelts of hail hitting her body. Her already stressed system is accelerating fast into overload. And her morning has only just begun!  She still has to figure out what clothes to put on, as most textures annoy her and feel uncomfortable on her body. She has to figure out what to eat for breakfast, as anything soft, mushy, or creamy repulses her. Worst of all, she has to figure out how to face the world outside that, for her, is like maneuvering through a sensory minefield. Jenny is an avoider or what is commonly known as sensory defensive (SD), a common mimicker of anxiety and panic. The sensory defensive feel too much, too soon and for too long, and experience the world as too loud, too bright, too fast and too tight, becoming easily distressed by everyday sensation

But sleep tha pondereth and is not to be and there oh may my weary spirit dwell apart forms heaven's eternity and yet how far from hell. other friends have flown before on the morrow he will leave me as my hopes have flown before the bird said nevermore. leave my loneliness unbroken. how dark a woe yet how sublimes a hope. And the fever called living is conquered at last. I stand amid the roar of a surf tormented shore and i hold within my hand grains of the golden sand how few yet how they creep through my fingers to the deep while i weep while i weep o god can i not grasp them with a tighter clasp o god can i not save one from the pitiless wave is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream. Hell rising form a thousand thrones shall do it reverence. It was the dead who groaned within lest the dead who is forsaken may not be happy now. even for thy woes i love thee even for thy woes thy beauty and thy woes think of all that is airy and fairy like and all that is hideous and unwieldy. hast thou not dragged Diana from her car. I care not though it perishes with a thought i then did cherish. For on its wing was dark alley and as it fluttered fell an essence powerful to destroy a soul that knew it well. (Talking about death) the intense reply of hers to our intelligence. Then all motion of whatever nature creates most writers poets in especial prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy an ecstatic intuition and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought at the true purposes seized only at the last moment at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable at the cautions selection and rejections at the painful erasures and interpolations in a word at the wheels and pinions the tackle for scene shifting the steep ladders and demon traps the cock[s feathers a the red pain and the black patches which in ninety nine cases out of the hundred constitute the properties of the literary _histiro. Wit the Arabians there is a medium between heaven and hell where men suffer no punishment but yet do not attain that tranquil and even happiness which they supposed to be characteristic of heavenly enjoyment. If i could dwell where israfel hath dwelt and he where i he might not sing so wildly well mortal melody, while a bolder note than this might swell form my lyre within the sky. And i am drunk with love of the dead who is my bride. And so being young and dipt in folly , I feel in love with melancholy. I could not love except where death was mingling his with beauty's breath or hymen, Time, and destiny were stalking between her and me. Yet that terror was not friegt but a tremulous delight a feeling not the jeweled mine could teach or bribe me to define nor love although the love were thine. Whose solitary soul could make an Eden of that dim lake. that my young life were a lasting dream my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the morrow. An idle longing night and day to dream my very life away. As others saw i could not bring my passions from a comman spring from the sam source i have not taken my sorrow and all i loved i loved alone La solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude estune belle chose impulse upon the ether the source of all motion is thought and the source of all thought. Be of heart and fear nothing your allotted days of stupor have expired and tomorrow i will myself induct you into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence. unknown now known of the speculative future merged in the august and certain present.

It was horrible and senseless, and I now felt the sudden need to drink scotch, brood, and read Edgar Allen Poe or the ending to Hamlet. Maybe I would top it all off with some YouTube videos of drowning kittens while listening to Radiohead.

Consider Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem, “The Raven.” Here we have a first-person narrator whose wife or lover, Lenore, has recently died. He is in his library searching through his books to find a way to make her death meaningful—or even understandable. When a raven enters the library, the narrator takes it as a sign and asks a series of increasingly desperate questions. The raven, of course, has long been a symbol for death, and the questions that the narrator asks the raven are all really questions about death. Is there a heaven? Does death come from God or the Devil? Will he ever get over her death? Will he see her again? These are likely the same things he was trying to find out from his books. But while the books may have tried to give answers, the raven—death itself—says only one word: “Nevermore.” So this is a poem that makes claims—or, more specifically, it is a poem that rejects claims. It rejects the notion that anyone can know anything about death, or what happens after death, except that a person who has died no longer exists. All that death “says” to us is “Nevermore.” If we try to go beyond this, we will eventually suffer the narrator’s fate and become insane. Many people would disagree vigorously with this premise. Some people believe that the spirits of the dead become ghosts that we can still communicate with. Others believe in heaven, hell, reincarnation, Nirvana, or some knowable final destination for the soul. I can imagine a number of different ways that one might go about rebutting Poe’s metaphysical truth claims. But it makes no difference whether or not ravens can talk. Nothing about Poe’s poem can be supported, or refuted, by scientific knowledge about the vocalization mechanisms of the Corvus corax. Nor does it matter whether or not Edgar Allen Poe ever knew anybody named Lenore, or owned a “bust of Pallas,” or did or said any of the things described in the poem. “The Raven” makes metaphysical truth claims that we can isolate and evaluate. But these claims do not depend on either the history or the science of the poem turning out to be true.

If Poe haunted her grave at night as tradition asserts, the nature of his experiences in a dark cemetery with the sound of the night wind through the funereal gratings and tall grave grasses must have been searing to the soul of one who was scarcely more than a boy.

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!’ Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’” — Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

I’m in a sphere of grief. Words turn into spears, piercing on this heart of mine, felt the cuts of love, felt the tearing of affection. Felt the pain of Edgar Allen Poe. Annabel Lee loved when novelty, cherished when she was a mere greenhorn. Loved her so affectionately, like an Agape. Hannah cherub

Death Demands A Recount by Stewart Stafford The premature burial bell rings, The body six feet below is alive, Purgatory's choking siren fades, Only darkness hears the bell peal. Even if some listeners reacted, A creeping terror stops them, And dodging a vampire's bite, Or the zombie’s flailing attack. No, let the restless corpse lie, Tighten the Reaper's icy grip, Silence stills a memorial plot, A blackout hush, no reprieve. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

The Poe Toaster by Stewart Stafford They call me The Poe Toaster, A sixty-year mourner, no boaster, With roses and cognac, I paid homage, To gothic Quarles’ eternal foggage. Some call me ghoul, stalker, graver, Obsessed fan, tombstone trader, Let him sleep unbroken, still his ghost, Tomahawk, overdue a tribute toast. Three roses; in-law, Eddy and wife, Cognac, exorbitant luxury in life, Relax, for I was kind, my friend, Pouring amontillado until the end. Why I stopped, if I'm woman or man, Are mysteries for C. Auguste Dupin, Shipwrecked on Night’s Plutonian shore, Allied with the silken darkness of yore. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Felt the pain of Edgar Allen Poe. Annabel Lee loved when novelty, cherished when she was a mere greenhorn. Loved her so affectionately, like an Agape. Described her love with the halo moon, took her to the kingdom by the sea. Enshrined your love for her with the stars, the sun remained envious. Your love made angels green eyed, created a havoc in the heaven places. Annabel Lee you left him young And it killed him.

Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

What do you think of Poe?" "He's awful. He was obviously . . . what's the term . . . 'disappointed in love' at some point. He probably never smiled again. The pages are just bursting with his longing for women to suffer. If he ever met me he'd probably punch me on the nose." "I think Poe's quite good, actually. The whole casual horror thing. Like someone standing next to you and screaming their head off and you asking them what the fuck and them stopping for a moment to say 'Oh you know, I'm just afraid of Death' and then they keep on with the screaming.

In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed— But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted. —A Dream, Edgar Allen Poe

I am a writer, therefore I am not sane.