Tag Archives: Edgar Allan Poe

Susan McLean, ‘Anagram: A Pallor, An Edge’

Leave a reply

Late at night, I saw a glowing,
as if realms beyond our knowing
kindly solace were bestowing.
Could this phantom be my wife?
 
But the gleam, as I drew nearer,
taking form and growing clearer,
was my visage in the mirror,
and the figure held a knife.
 
“Fool,” said I, “your idle dreaming
on some insubstantial seeming
is some demon’s way of scheming
to mislead your soul to hell.

“Melancholy, doom-and-glooming,
pining, horror, guilt, exhuming,
Nevermore and Ulalume-ing –
write your angst out: that could sell.”

*****

Susan McLean writes: “This poem was inspired by a 2019 competition at The Spectator to write a poem in the style of a famous author and to have its title be an anagram of the poet’s name. I was a big fan of the poetry and short stories of Edgar Allan Poe when I was a teen, so I investigated words that I could draw from his name that would have strong associations with his work. Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, who died of tuberculosis eleven years later. Many of his poems and stories concern mourning for the death of a beautiful woman, including his most famous poem, “The Raven.” This poem borrows the trochaic meter and some elements of the rhyme scheme of that poem. It also alludes to a number of Poe’s favorite themes, and echoes some of his lines. It was not among the winners at The Spectator, but I later reworked it, and it recently appeared in Lighten Up Online.”

Susan McLean has two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her poems have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Measure, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
https://www.pw.org/content/susan_mclean

“Edgar Allan Poe (ilustración off topic)” by El Humilde Fotero del Pánico is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Susan McLean, ‘Morbid Interest’

1 Reply

How unpleasant to meet Mr. Poe.
It gives a young lady a chill
when, just as she’s saying hello,
he asks if she’s lately been ill.

It was mid-afternoon, yet he seemed
to be tipsy or mildly sedated.
How oddly his mournful eyes gleamed
when he heard that we might be related.

He muttered some rhymes for my name,
saying nothing could be more inspiring
to a poet desirous of fame
than the sight of young beauties expiring.

Then he asked if I had a bad cough
or a semi-conversable crow.
I informed him of where to get off.
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Poe.

*****

Susan McLean writes: “In my teens, I was a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe‘s short stories and poetry. I loved his eerie subjects and crooning, incantatory lines. I memorized his poem ‘To Helen,’ and I parodied his iconic ‘The Raven.’ But in grad school, I read his essay ‘The Philosophy of Composition,’ in which he wrote that “the death . . . of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” Hmmm. At that moment, it occurred to me that all of those dead women of his stories and poems might be less an outpouring of personal grief and more a product of an agenda. Years later, when responding to a challenge from the British journal The Spectator to write a poem modeled on Edward Lear’s ‘How pleasant to know Mr. Lear‘ but about another author, I imagined how Poe might seem to a young woman being introduced to him.
This poem, which was originally published in Light Quarterly, was later reprinted in Per
Contra and in my second poetry book, The Whetstone Misses the Knife.”

Susan McLean has two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her poems have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Measure, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
https://www.pw.org/content/susan_mclean

Illustration: DALL-E