Category: English

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…

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Spooks, by Nathalia Crane

Mac Harshberger - illustration for Spooks
Mac Harshberger – illustration for “Spooks” in The Singing Crow (1926)

In 1926, at age 13, Nathalia Crane published her third collection of poetry, The Singing Crow and Other Poems. The title comes from a long poem about a crow that, after having its beak torn by an arrow, becomes a wonderful singer; she returns to that topic in the first poem of the collection’s epilogue, “A singer gone.” The book got some success, and she was then dubbed “The Brooklyn Bard” (see Jessica Amanda Salmonson, “Girl Writers: Nathalia Crane, Vivienne Dayrell, & Daisy Ashford,” The Weird Review). There are several very short poems, in particular “The Colors” is often quoted: CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Hilda Conkling’s dreams of love

Jeremy Lipking - Adrift
Jeremy Lipking – Adrift (2013) – from Art Renewal Center

LOVELINESS
by Hilda Conkling

LOVELINESS that dies when I forget
Comes alive when I remember.

In previous posts, I have presented two themes from Poems by a Little Girl (1920), Hilda Conkling’s first volume: dreams, often involving fairies and nature, then rose petals, which she associates with her heart, or with a dove representing love. In her second volume Shoes of the Wind (1922), the topics of dreams, roses and love become united within two beautiful poems, but here love becomes more personal. Indeed, Hilda was no more a little girl, she entered into puberty, so her fantasies and desires took a more womanly form. Also the style of her poetry matured, with a quasi-adult sophistication. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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The summit of the amorous mountain, by Aleister Crowley

August von Pettenkofen - Study of a Nude Young Girl
August Xaver Karl von Pettenkofen – Study of a Nude Young Girl – from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, via Wikimedia Commons

Today I present an erotic poem, probably full of hidden sexual meanings. Maybe the title refers to the Mons Veneris, and the four last verses of the first stanza also seem to hint at some sexual acts whose description was considered too obscene to be told explicitly in the early 20th century. The poem ends in ecstasy with a reference to Satan and Hell, as the latter seems to be more pleasurable than the Heaven of religion. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Nathalia Crane, aged twelve, makes fun of religion

Flor Garduño – Comunión
Flor Garduño – Comunión, Mexico (2000)

In a previous post, I presented “The First Reformer,” the first poem in Saints and Reformers, the fourth part of Lava Lane, and Other Poems, her second volume published in 1925. Then I mentioned three others that explicitly mock religion: “Sunday Morning,” “The Making of a Saint” and “The Edict.” I reproduce them here. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Younger Girl, by John Sebastian

Hugh Shirley Candyside - John Sebastian in concert
Hugh Shirley Candyside – John Sebastian performing in concert in East Lansing, Michigan, August 1970 – from Wikimedia Commons

John Benson Sebastian is an American singer and songwriter born in 1944. In 1965 he formed the band The Lovin’ Spoonful, for which he sang and played the guitar, also he authored all their hit songs during that period. He left the band in 1968 to start a solo career that went on until now. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Mark Twain on the sexual superiority of women and girls

Mark Twain and Dorothy Quick
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and Dorothy Quick aboard the Minnetonka (July 1907) – from historicaltimes.tumblr.com

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (b. November 30, 1835; d. April 21, 1910), the American writer and humorist better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was a free mind who evolved towards radicalism as he aged, opposing slavery and American imperialism, promoting civil rights and hailing labour unions. Although he was raised as a Presbyterian, he became distrustful of dogma and established religion. He did not publish in his lifetime his most controversial works about religion, and some of them were withheld from publication after his death, because his family disapproved them, notably: the novel The Mysterious Stranger published in 1916, the short story Little Bessie first published in 1972, and the collection of essays Letters From The Earth, written around 1909 and published only in 1962. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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