REELY'S POETRY BLOG

The Baltimore Sun reports that the “Poe Toaster” who faithfully visited Poe’s grave every January 19th for 60 years failed to show up at midnight on January 19, 2010. He would arrive sometime between midnight and 5:30 a.m. and leave a bottle of cognac and three roses.

Jeff Jerome, the curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House in Baltimore, Maryland told the Baltimore Sun that there was nothing to make anyone think the toaster wasn’t coming this year. He said the man sometimes knelt at the tombstone or put his hands on it. Sometimes he would leave a note along with his other gifts.

As the ritual came to be known over the years, people would gather nearby to watch but would not disturb the Poe Toaster. A group of 30-50 people came this year but left disappointed. People speculated that the toaster was ill, or chose to stop coming after the bicentennial of Poe’s birthday last year (or perhaps the 60th year anniversary of his own visits).

Mr Jerome said he would continue to keep vigil each morning of January 19 until 2012. “After two years if he doesn’t show up, I think we can safely assume the tribute has ended,” he said.

On the evening before his beheading, October 29, 1618, it is said that Sir Walter Raleigh wrote these words in his Bible:

E’en such is time! who takes in trust
Our youth, our joys and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust:
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days!
But from this earth, this grave, this dust
The Lord will raise me up I trust.

I didn’t know that when I first read the verse in a book of poetical quotations where it was listed among other entries under the category “Graves.” It rather takes on a different sort of significance if he really did write it knowing that he was going to have his head cut off the next day!

I don’t feel like posting a poem today, so humor me. Let’s talk about Dutch Schultz instead. Today in 1935, Prohibition-era gangster Dutch Schultz was shot at the Palace Chophouse in Newark, NJ, and died from his wounds after some lengthy and incoherent rambling. His many last words were taken down by a stenographer and even made it into literature 35 years later courtesy of author, William S. Burroughs, and later on Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson found some kind of global conspiracy in the ramblings, as though they weren’t ramblings at all, but some kind of code.

The last words page concludes with these sentiments: “Some say this is everything from the ravings of someone on the brink of death to poetry to secrets of the mob world. You be the judge.”

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I have a couple of poems today from Hayden Carruth. Today is his 87th birthday (Happy Birthday!).

I was reading his poem, Prepare, which he wrote for his wife:

“Why don’t you write me a poem that will prepare me for your
death?” you said.
It was a rare day here in our climate, bright and sunny. I didn’t feel like
dying that day.
I didn’t even want to think about it — my lovely knees and bold
shoulders broken open, …
read the entire poem on his website

The poem doesn’t mention the afterlife per se. Still, I think about it when I read mostly anything about dying, and often I have wondered why so many religions teach that there is an afterlife, but yet when someone dies, no one seems to believe it. Perhaps it is the shock of permanent physical separation. You can think you’re prepared for it, but you never really are.
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We’ve got an audio of Alfred Noyes’ The Highwayman , although our version is a little different than you will find on most sites. We got it out of a book from 1912.

Honestly, I am not really looking for these little differences, it’s more like they jump out at me when I’m reading a poem. Some poems I know or recall in a different way in the first place. Some just don’t make sense to me so I investigate further to see if I’m right. Such was the case with The Highwayman.

Reading it on Wikipedia, I get to the part where Bess, the landlord’s daughter, the landlord’s black-eyed, red-lipped daughter (some online versions leave out her red lips), gets her finger on the musket’s trigger. After the struggle she went through to get hold of the musket’s trigger, it just didn’t make sense for the line to say “… The trigger at least was hers.” I thought it should be “at last.”

‘At least’ conveys something entirely different – a sense of resignation – when the next part makes it clear that just getting hold of the trigger was in fact Bess’s intention. If the red-coats heard Bess, she must’ve strongly doubted they’d shoot her. She surely knew they fully meant for her to watch them kill her lover. No, they would not be the ones to fire a shot and only a shot would warn the highwayman away.

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;

Off I went to investigate and I found it in a digitized book, The Home Book of Verse, American and English (1580-1912).

I’d like to say “I was right, I was right,” but who knows, maybe it’s in another book the other way. So allow us to present to you the version of The Highwayman from The Home Book of Verse:

http://www.reelyredd.com/english-0308thehighwayman.htm

We are of course very interested to know whether “least” or “last” makes more sense to you and why.

Reely