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Edgar Allan Poe is one of few authors by whom I’ve read everything, at least everything available, including his literary criticism. I was obsessed with him for a while, and in an alternative life where I get a Ph.D. in English Literature, I might well be writing academic papers on Poe (and Hawthorne, and Melville, and maybe Irving).

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is easy to pick as Poe’s biggest failure. It is his only attempt at a novel, and falls short even there, with a series of loosely connected episodes that lack continuity and a proper ending. The problems don’t end there. It is also Poe’s most damningly racist work. Though racist caricatures appear in his other tales, this is the one most informed by Poe’s pathological fear of non-whiteness. However, it also proves to be one of his most influential works, figuring explicitly into subsequent works by some of his biggest admirers, particularly Jules Verne and H.P. Lovecraft.

The hero of Mat Johnson’s Pym is an African American scholar obsessed with Poe, and especially with Pym. This singular obsession with white authors (and a refusal to serve on the diversity committee) disrupts his academic career, but a series of coincidences leads him on his own fantastic voyage that parallel Poe’s Pym, encountering much of the same…. experiences.

It is simultaneously a pastiche and a critique of Poe, but an effective satire of current American culture: academia, pop painting, junk food, you name it. In some ways it is an academic novel, wise and winking in literary references, casually name-dropping major pieces of the black canon including ones that white readers like me didn’t know about (Equiano, Webb) mixed in with the more obvious ones to the source material (one nod to Lovecraft made me laugh out loud). But it would work without one knowing literary history, purely as adventure/horror and humor. And of course it is book about race itself; a critical reflection about whiteness and blackness both literal and figurative.

I love everything about this book. It centers me in the black experience of America as effectively as Ralph Ellison, and gives me a fix of sharp satire that reminds me of being fourteen and discovering Kurt Vonnegut. It pushes my buttons as literary nerd, but is enjoyable purely as a great yarn.

The American literary canon is racist and sexist because our history is racist and sexist, but what do we do about it? Pointing out the problems is necessary, but doesn’t suggest where to go next. I’m not a big fan of expunging literary history; that itself becomes a kind of whitewashing. Besides, I think there is value in Poe, in Twain, even in Margaret Mitchell. I would rather read those books, then read these creative critiques–books like Johnson’s Pym, or Alice Randall’s The Wind Be Gone–that critique and re-create and re-center the narratives, that subsume and overtake the source material.

I think Johnson takes on a particularly problematic text to show just how brilliantly this can be done; it makes me grateful for Poe’s Pym because it makes Johnson’s possible.

1. I've been reading quite a lot of poetry lately. For grown-up poems, I've been reading that new Neruda book I blogged about as well as re-reading Ted Kooser's Valentines. In the kidlit arena, I've been reading the finalists for the CYBILS awards, since I'm one of the judges for the poetry category. Very good stuff on the short list this year.

2. The Airborne Toxic Event has a new single, "Changing", which has a major hook to it. "I am a gentlemen" is STUCK IN MY BRAINRADIO. I've heard it once in concert and once on the radio and now I'm hooked - can't believe I can't buy it until February, but it was kind of the band to post the track on YouTube!

3. I backed my computer files up today. I mention it in case it's something you need to do too - it can be so easy to let these things slide, somehow, isn't it?

4. On Tuesday, my friend Lisa and I are to see & hear author Brad Meltzer speak at the Free Library of Philadelphia. I'm looking forward to it - and it will make my second theatre-like cultural event this month, so I'm exceeding that particular well-filling goal!

5. January 19th marked the occasion of Edgar Allan Poe's 202nd birthday. Blogger Jef Otte came up with "Five weird ways to celebrate", which is presented in countdown format. Number five, entitled "Creeping", is:

In Tell-Tale Heart, perhaps the most famous of Poe's stories, the narrator spends all night slowly creeping toward his neighbor, who is lying asleep in his bed, intent upon murdering him. Today, try spending a couple of hours creeping toward the guy in the cubicle next to you on your rolly chair. If he says anything, shine a penlight in his vulture eye.

Edgar Allen Poe called poetry "the rhythmical creation of Beauty". Is that not lovely?

But sometimes, Beauty can be a real beast, and I mean that in two senses:

First off, a poem need not be about something attractive in order to be a thing of beauty.

Read, for instance, this beautiful poem by Jack Gilbert about grief following the loss of his wife, Michiko. You will notice that he never mentions grief by name, and that this poem begins with a simile that turns into an extended metaphor. And I predict that you will love this poem as it breaks your heart, and as you feel its weight settle into the box you already carry, and that you will see its beauty, even though it is not about something most people would deem beautiful


Michiko Dead
by Jack Gilbert

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
Read the rest here.

Poems can be about loss and fear, about war and rape, about horror and shame, just as they can be about love and hope, about flowers and clouds, about joy and pride. When done well, however, they are a form of Beauty, just as Poe said.

Second, it can be a bear to achieve "rhythmical creation of Beauty."

I have spent the past three days in false starts and erasures of a poem intended for the Shakespeare poems. I haven't given up on this poem yet, but I'm stepping away from it for now because it's to the point where I am working so hard to shove the poem together that it will never become a thing of Beauty; the poem and I are too angry with each other, I think it best for us both to cool down for a bit and start again. Perhaps she and I will get along better after we take a break from one another.

Most everyone I know seems to acknowledge that first drafts of novels aren't usually pretty. But neither are first drafts of poems - even metrical poems. Want proof? Go to the Manuscripts section of this page about Visual Aids for Jonathan C. Glance's English class and have a look at William Blake's page. Or Byron's. Or Keats. Or even Elizabeth Barret Browning, and hers is pretty clean. Sometimes getting things in order is a beastly undertaking. But when it is done, what a thing of Beauty it can be. Read, for instance, the final version of Blake's poem, "The Tyger" from Songs of Experience, with its wonderful trochaic metre and end rhymes, and ask yourself "Is this not Beauty, rhythmically created?":

The Tyger
by William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Living in the Pacific Northwest as I do, neither grey skies nor crows are an unusual sight,

...and even more to the left....

...and *more* fluttering eerily overhead...

I must say there was some looking-over-my-shoulder on the way home...

I was asked to submit  a piece of writing for a little newsletter the All-Write Consortium is putting together.  The focuse for this issue is Why Workshop?  So I refined a poem that I think fits with the theme.  I would love some feedback before I submit it.  Here are some questions I have: Do you [...]

...and all the CORALINE posts reminded me that someone wrote in recently to let me know that Barnes and Noble were having an online post-holidays sale on the Coraline audiobook (the US one, with me reading it). It's the 3 CD version, and it's on sale there right now for $2 (it's usually $18) and if you want one at that price you should probably move fast, as it mentions that quantities are limited. (Edit -- no, it's the cassette version, not the CD version. Sorry.)

(And I just noticed that the B&N Edgar Allan Poe book is out of print, so I think I'll put my introduction, an essay on Poe, up on http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/ soon.)