Paltry commendations
True -- excited -- very, very wonderfully excited I have been and am about starting this blog; but please do not say that I am mad! The cause for my excitement is the opportunity to share my thoughts about the poems of Edgar Allan Poe, and the hope to hear back from Poe enthusiasts around the world. The focus of this blog will be the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. My posts will attempt to analyze and reflect upon Poe’s verses to shed light on possible autobiographic and artistic interpretations of the poems. In this sense, we will take Poe at his word, as he expressed it in the preface to The Raven and Other Poems in 1845: Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence; they must not — they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations,