Recent References to Poe

[bendk]

That Datlow anthology sounds great "remixed and re-imagined" versions of Poe's tales. I bet Ligotti could have written a heck of a story for this one. I will definitely read this book. I love Poe's stories, I always return to them. I look forward to see what Pat Cadigan wrote. Her story in Datlow's Inferno "Stilled Life" was excellent. I think she writes mostly sci fi, but that story was certainly horror.

There is another recent anthology out, Poe's Children edited by Peter Straub. Ligotti has one of his stories reprinted in it. The first amazon review lists the table of contents.

http://www.amazon.com/Poes-Children-New-Horror-Anthology/dp/0385522835

 

http://www.amazon.com/Poes-Children-New-Horror-Anthology/dp/0385522835

[paeng]

http://www.poets.net/2008/12/epigram...gar-allan.html

[Brendan Moody]

I've just finished reading Datlow's anthology, and would definitely recommend it. My excessively detailed review is available here.

Ligotti fans might particularly be interested in "Technicolor," which is a bit like "The Chymist" in some ways.

[paeng]

Behind a paywall, though:

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/vi...o-to-poe-14065

Mentioned by Markmaking:

http://markmaking.typepad.com/markma...rs-of-poe.html

[paeng]

Ray Harryhausen's production of "The Pit and the Pendulum" on DVD:

http://www.thepitandthependulumshortfilm.com/

And a comic book version from Bluewater Productions:

http://www.bluewaterprod.com/news/Pi..._pendulum2.php

[paeng]

"In honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe — the 19th-century American author and one-time University of Virginia student — the U.Va. Library announces the acquisition of a rare Poe letter and the opening of an exhibit that explores his life, works and enduring influence.

"In the letter, written in July 1842, Poe apologizes to publishers J. and H.G. Langley for his drunken behavior. He encloses an article he hopes the publishers will buy, as he is 'desperately pushed for money.' He also blames a friend, poet and lawyer William Ross Wallace, for making him drink too many 'juleps' and tries to make amends for the unfortunate result:

"'Will you be so kind enough to put the best possible interpretation upon my behavior while in N-York? You must have conceived a queer idea of me – but the simple truth is that Wallace would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying.'"

http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/press/poe/

[paeng]

"The Humbug"

"Edgar Allan Poe and the economy of horror."

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critic...atlarge_lepore

[paeng]

Jim Hammond on Poe

http://www.ljhammond.com/phlit/2009-05b.htm

[Russell Nash]

His birthday was remembered everywhere else, I believe. For example:

(Poe celebrates 200 years as a master of terror)

Poe celebra 200 años como maestro del terror · ELPAS.com

Remembering E. A. Poe, in case new generations didn't read him yet, a book containing some of his best stories was published in Spanish translation at the beginning of 2009. In fact, as far as I know, one of the best translations of Poe to Spanish was done by Julio Cortazar (version which I also read). According to a blog this new book made a reference to a letter to Lowell written by Poe.I cannot verify it though. However, I found this letter online, and I'd like to share it with you:

New-York, July 2. 44.

My Dear Mr Lowell,

I can feel for the "constitutional indolence" of which you complain --for it is one of my own besetting sins. I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious--by fits. There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but solitary communion with the "mountains & the woods"-- the "altars" of Byron. I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. Then I scribble all day, and read all night, so long as the disease endures. This is also the temperament of P. P. Cooke, of V the author of "Florence Vane", "Young Rosalie Lee", & some other sweet poems-- and I should not be surprised if it were your own. Cooke writes and thinks as you--and I have been told that you resemble him personally.

I am not ambitious--unless negatively. I, now and then feel stirred up to excel a fool, merely because I hate to let a fool imagine that he may excel me. Beyond this I feel nothing of ambition. I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate--the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active--not more happy--nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary--and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has [page 2] lived in vain-- that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future--that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves--nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass.--I have no belief in spirituality. I think the word a mere word. No one has really a conception of spirit. We cannot imagine what is not. We deceive ourselves by the idea of infinitely rarefist matter. Matter escapes the senses by degrees--a stone--a metal--a liquid--the atmosphere --a gas--the luminiferous ether. Beyond this there are other modifications more rare. But to all we attach the notion of a constitution of particles--atomic composition. For this reason only, we think spirit different; for spirit, we say is unparticled, and therefore is not matter. But it is clear that if we proceed sufficiently far in our ideas of rarefaction, we shall arrive at a point where the particles coalesce; for, although the particles be infinite, the infinity of littleness in the spaces between them, is an absurdity.--The unparticlet matter, permeating & impelling, all things, is God. Its activity is the thought of God--which creates. Man, and other thinking beings, are individualizations of the unparticled matter. Man exists as a "person", by being clothed with matter (the particled matter) which individualizes him. Thus habited, his life is rudimental. What we call "death" is the painful metamorphosis. The stars are the habitations of rudimental beings. But for the necessity of the rudimental life, there would have been no worlds. At death, the worm is the butterfly-- still material, but of a matter unrecognized by our organs--recognized, occasionally, perhaps, by the sleep-waker, directly--without organs--through the mesmeric medium. Thus a sleep-waker may see ghosts. Divested of the rudimental covering, the being inhabits space--what we suppose to be the immaterial universe--passing every where, and acting [page 3:] all things, by mere volition-- cognizant of all secrets but that of the nature of God's volition--the motion, or activity, of the unparticled matter.

You speak of "an estimate of my life"--and, from what I have already said, you will see that I have none to give. I have been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of temporal things, to give any continuous effort to anything--to be consistent in anything. My life has been whim--impulse--passion--a longing for solitude--a scorn of all things present, in an earnest desire for the future.

I am profoundly excited by music, and by some poems--those of Tennyson especially--whom, with Keats, Shelley, Coleridge (occasionally) and a few others of like thought and expression, I regard as the sole poets. Music is the perfection of the soul, or idea, of Poetry. The vagueness >>and<< of exultation arous[ed by] a sweet air (which should be strictly indefinite & never too strongly suggestive) is precisely what we should aim at in poetry. Affectation, within bounds, is thus no blemish.

I still adhere to Dickens as either author, or dictator, of the review. My reasons would convince you, could I give them to you--but I have left myself no space. I had two long interviews with Mr D. when here. Nearly every thing in the critique, I heard from >>D<< him or suggested to him, personally. The poem of Emerson I read to him.

I have been so negligent as not to preserve copies of any of my volumes of poems--nor was either worthy preservation. The best passages were culled in Hirst's article. I think my best poems, "The Sleeper", "The Conqueror Worm", "The Haunted Palace", >>"A Paen"<< "Lenore", "Dreamland" & "The Coliseum"--but all have been hurried & unconsidered. My best tales are "Ligeia"; The "GoldBug"; The "Murders in the [page 4:] Rue Morgue", "The Fall of the House of Usher", The "Tell-Tale Heart", The "Black Cat", "William Wilson", & "The Descent into the Maelstrom." "The Purloined Letter," forthcoming in the "Gift", is, perhaps, the best of my tales of ratiocination. I have lately written, for Godey, "The Oblong-Box", and "Thou art the Man"--as yet unpublished. With this, I mail you "The Gold-Bug", which is the only one of my tales I have on hand.

Graham has had, for 9 months, a review of mine on Longfellow's "Spanish Student", which I have "used up", and in which I have exposed some of the grossest plagiarisms ever perpetrated. I can't tell why he does not publish it.--I believe G. intends my Life for the September number, which will be made up by the 10th August. Your article shd be on hand as soon as convenient.

Believe me your true friend.

E A Poe.

[Evans]

Very tempted to pinch that bottom left Poe portrait for a profile picture Alberto...