“Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore.
Tell me what the lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore.
Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.'” – “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe
Has this ever happened to you? You’re browsing on the Internet and you get sidetracked into looking up really random things that have no logical connection to what you were originally doing?
Tonight, as I was looking at the latest t-shirt on Design By Humans, I ran across an excerpt of Poe’s “The Raven,” which led me to spend the next half hour reading the poem for the first time and looking up the analysis online. And now, I’m blogging about it.
Yeah, I am totally weird.
But I did like the poem. Poe was good at writing about depressing subjects, and this poem, about a man who encounters a raven after the death of his lover, is prototypical Poe (ha…alliteration).
What’s interesting is that Poe used a very logical approach to writing the poem in order to appeal to both popular and critical opinion. There is a consistent structure, liberal use of poetic devices, and an interesting story. In other words, Poe was looking for a smash hit, and it did become one.
I enjoyed the story development and how Poe depicts the main character’s gradual descent into madness while speaking to a talking raven. It’s a pretty grim poem, but was definitely an enjoyable read.
Read the full poem here if you’re brave and/or have about six minutes to spare.
Caw, caw at randomtidbitsofthought.wordpress.com.
