Full circle

Aleksandra Waliszewska
Aleksandra Waliszewska – from Frank T. Zumbachs Mysterious World

Poets and Lovers exists since 4 years, and this is its 427th article. It should go on for a 5th year, with more poems and songs presented at a regular frequency. Indeed, I am indebted to the collection Amours Enfantines by François Lemonnier for its many poems, mostly in French, devoted to the love of little girls; I discovered there many lesser-known authors. I have also collected a list of songs, mostly in English, about young girls. However, I lack poems in English, readers are welcome to propose some. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Moonlight magick: love and war

Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley (c1912) – from The Equinox, volume 1, issue 10 (1913)

In a previous post, I described a surrealistic walk that I made in 2015, starting with Ernest Dowson’s passion for absinthe, then meeting other poets, MoonCCat, Bertolt Brecht and Jim Morrison, and finally ending at Dowson’s great passion, little girls. Throughout this path I encountered the moon, which presides over the impermanence of all things.

Now I will relate my mysterious journey in the shadow of a fearful and scandalous magician: Aleister Crowley, whom the British journal John Bull called “the wickedest man in the world” and “a man we’d like to hang.” It is a secret world, which must be evoked in metaphorical language. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

The Village Street, attributed to Edgar Allan Poe

Michael G. Laster - Birthright
Michael G. Laster – Birthright

This poem is attributed to Poe, however it does not appear in the list given by The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, so a doubt remains about its authorship. According to the Classic Literature Library, it was written or published around October 26, 1831. This site includes it in the category “Edgar Allan Poe Doubtful Poems.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

May Queen Ode, by Edgar Allan Poe

S.J. Thompson - The May Queen and her court
S.J. Thompson, photographer – The May Queen and her court, New Westminster, BC, Canada (c.1887) – New Westminster Public Library, Heritage Database, accession number 2728

About April 1836, Harriet Virginia Scott, a schoolgirl in Richmond, asked Edgar Allan Poe to compose a poem for her to recite to the Queen of the May. He complied by writing four or five stanzas. About eighty years later (between 1911 and 1917), she remembered one of them and sent it to J. H. Whitty, who published it in the second edition of Complete Poems (1917). CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

The Poe Cottage, by Nathalia Crane

The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage
The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, The Bronx, New York City

Around May 1846, Edgar Allan Poe moved in a small and humble cottage in The Bronx, New York City, with his wife Virginia Eliza Clemm and her mother Maria. It would be the last home of the couple. Virginia died of tuberculosis in the cottage’s first floor bedroom on January 30, 1847; then Edgar died in mysterious circumstances in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, while he was travelling back home from Richmond. Upon hearing the news of his death, his mother-in-law Maria moved out of the cottage. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

A Girl’s Magic in Equinox

J. B. B. Wellington - Mother's Jewels (1917)
J. B. B. Wellington – Mother’s Jewels (1917) – The Royal Photographic Society Collection, Bath, UK

Poets and Lovers, the second version of Agapeta, exists since six months. More precisely, it started at an experimental level on a confidential site on March 17, then it got its current domain name on the 20th. Like Pigtails in Paint, it is hosted by Rainbow Digital Media. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Annabel Lee, by Edgar Allan Poe

W.S. Hartshorn - Edgar Allan Poe
W.S. Hartshorn – Edgar Allan Poe (1848) – from “Famous People” collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-10610]

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19th, 1809 — October 7th, 1849) is an American writer known for the strangeness both of his writing and of his life. He was named Edgar Poe, the second child of two traveling stage actors; his father abandoned his family in 1810, and his mother died on December 8th, 1811. His father was also dead then, and Edgar was taken into the home of John and Frances Allan, who served as a foster family, though they never formally adopted him. From them he got his middle name Allan. The family moved to Great Britain in 1815, then back to Richmond, VA, in 1820, so Edgar was educated in both countries. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…