Posted on January 28, 2011 | 
Is it an elegiac paryclausithryron (an ancient Greek and Roman poetic form featuring the shut-out lover)? In a way it is, and it certainly elevated Edgar Allan Poe to pop star status back in the middle of the 19th Century, just as a hit song would do today. But E.A. never made much money from The Raven and it didn’t save him from a short life of poverty.
Depressing and inspiring. I love the penultimate verse. I’m pairing it with a beautiful poem by 18th Century haiku poet, Shukabo.
The Raven (excerpt)
`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!’ I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’
—Edgar Allan Poe
Ware o yobu ka
meido mo shimo no
asagarasu
Is it me the raven calls
from this world of shades
this frosty morning?
—Shukabo
—Erin Orison, DEAD LOVE/the Daily Slice
