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I’ve written part 2 of my article Tracing the Roots of Your Favorite American Author on Wandering Educators. Click here to read it.

I learned a great deal about the hardships of Edgar Allan Poe and the impressive list of friends Nathaniel Hawthorne had! What do you know about your favorite American writer?

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It was Edgar Allan Poe's birthday this past week, as many of you may know.  This reminder, combined with the enthusiasm of our own tiny Poe aficionado, inspired us to put together this article.  Whether you know a young Poe fan, or are a parent or teacher looking to introduce his works to a younger audience, we're here to help you out!

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One of my favorite sports articles of all time is a retelling of the classic poem, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe. Only this version, written by K.C. Clapp of the Grand Rapids Herald in July 1945, was not the story of a lost love, but of a lost baseball game. The Annabelle Lee in Clapp’s poem was a left-handed pitcher for the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). On July 7, 1945, she pitched nine innings of no-hit, no-run ball against Clapp’s hometown team, the Grand Rapids Chicks.



Annabelle Lee Harmon, a native of North Hollywood, California, died on July 3 at the age of 86, and as the baseball playoffs begin, it seems like the perfect time to remember her. Hardly any media outlets noted her passing, and that’s a pity, because she was a warm, elegant, delightful woman who made an indelible imprint on the national pastime. She played pro baseball for seven years and threw the AAGPBL’s first perfect game on July 29, 1944. Beyond that, she was the aunt of major league pitcher Bill Lee—and the person who the “Spaceman” credits with teaching him how to pitch.

My most vivid memory of Annabelle is from 1995, when the All-Americans met for a reunion at a resort in Indian Wells, California. Annabelle was there with her mother Hazel, who was close to 100 years old. The paperback edition of my book about the league, A Whole New Ball Game, had just come out, and I had traveled from the east coast to show it off to the women who inspired it. With me were two friends, including Felicia Halpert, a sportswriter and a storied softball player from the women’s leagues in Brooklyn, New York.

It was late—close to midnight—but Felicia had been asking Annabelle if she still had her “stuff.” Annabelle said, “Sure, I’ll show you.” She laid down a makeshift home plate on the edge of the hotel’s patio, stationed Felicia there with a glove that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and walked off her pitching distance. Then, under fluorescent lights in the warm autumn night, the 73-year-old southpaw put on a pitching clinic. She delivered fastballs, curves, and knuckleballs, and Felicia, whose position was shrouded in darkness, did her best to catch them. Pretty soon her former teammates were lined up on the patio, cheering her on.

As I watched, I couldn’t help but think of my favorite line from Clapp’s poem: “The moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the curves of Annabelle Lee.” All these years later, I still remember Annabelle on that patio, firing pitches through the night, a feisty blond with a poetic name, a wicked knuckleball, and a shared legacy as one of the original girls of summer. She will be missed.

“Annabelle Lee Again Arouses Poet’s Muse”
by K.C. Clapp
Grand Rapids Herald, July 10, 1945

It wasn’t so many hours ago
July 7, specifically,
That a maiden there pitched whom you may know
By the name of Annabelle Lee,
And she hurled so well that not a Chick hit,
Going down to her, one, two, three.

She was not wild, this talented child,
Who twirled so effectively.
And no free passes were handed out
By this stingy Annabelle Lee
But the base hits rang for the Fort Wayne gang
For a 6-0 victory.

And this is the reason as 3,000 know
Who witnessed her wizardry
That not a Chick could hit a lick
Off the slants of Annabelle Lee,
So they sharply dropped from second spot
To a humble berth in 3.
But Fort Wayne cheers its peach-clad dears
Because of Annabelle Lee.

The moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the curves of Annabelle Lee.
And the South Field lights will gleam many nights
Before such a sight I may see—
No hits by Ziegler or Tetzlaff or Eisen,
No hits by the bustling “B.”
No hits by Maguire or Petras or “Twi,”
Why? Because of Annabelle Lee.

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I recently read Laura Lippman's In A Strange City, a murder mystery novel in which a strange little man attempts to hire PI Tess Monaghan in order to unmask the Visitor (also known as the Poe Toaster), who has been visiting the Baltimore grave of Edgar Allan Poe every year on 19 January for the past fifty years. On each visit s/he leaves three red roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac. Since the Visitor is committing no crime Tess refuses the assignment, but she worries that a less scrupulous PI may take it on, so she goes to the 19 January vigil as an observer. She watches as two cloaked figures approach the grave, appear to embrace and then part, but as they walk off in different directions, there's a gunshot and one of them is killed. Tess quickly learns that the dead man is not the regular Visitor. So who is he? And why was he there? When it turns out that Tess's would-be client had given her a fake name, she knows she must try to find him. And when an old friend from her past surfaces, claiming that the shooting was a homophobic hate crime, things only get more complicated...

This was a fascinating novel and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It also gave me a taste for reading Poe's poetry, so this week I'm sharing this poem:

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love —
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me —
Yes! — that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we —
Of many far wiser than we —
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.


Today is the birthday of Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe, Edgar Allan Poe's first cousin whom he married in 1835 (despite being only 13 years old, and there being a 14 year age gap between them. Virginia contracted tuberculosis when she was 19, and when she died in 1847, Poe was devastated and started drinking heavily. It is possible that she was the inspiration for this poem.


This week's Poetry Friday round-up is over at Read. Imagine. Talk!.

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(A Not-So-Scary Story) written and illustrated by Alison Paul Houghton Mifflin 2007 I am of two distinct minds about this picture book. 1. Interesting idea, flawed execution. 2. Not every recent illustration graduate from art school deserves to have their final project published. No, I don't have evidence of this last statement being true in this case, or in the many others I have seen

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Someone asked me about Edgar Allan Poe while I was signing in Mantova a few days ago, which reminded me that I wrote an introduction to a book of illustrated Poe poems and stories which Barnes and Noble published a few years ago. Seeing that their book is now out of print, I don't think anyone would object if I put the essay up here at www.neilgaiman.com

It's at http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/essays/essaysbyneil/poe/
(And for those of you reading this on an RSS feed, you can find it, and many more odd and interesting things at http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/)

I know that you are very busy at the moment, but should you find time to mention in your blog that Charles Vess and Charles de Lint will appear together tomorrow night (Monday, Sept. 10th) at Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville, NC to read, sign books, and answer questions, then I just might be the happiest little bookseller in the world. Pretty please? Much Love, -Gina

easy! I hope that people read this in time.

Neil,

And now I'm going to do the sort of things you do when you fetch up in the UK and you've been travelling for a few weeks. I'm going to Boots, and I'm going to buy shaving oil and more toothpaste, for example. Then I'm going to M&S and I'm going to buy a black sweater or two, because it's going to get colder on my travels from here on out.

Then I think maybe I might do some writing. That would be nice.

...

Given that I was bragging the other night about how the readers of this blog between them know everything, I wondered if anyone knew whether there was a good on-line map of the actual journey from China to India made by the Monkey and his traveling companions in the Wu Cheng'en book Journey to the West?

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I've got an eclectic mix of poems for you this week. First is "Ariel's Song" from The Tempest:

Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.
Hark, hark!
Bow-wow.
The watch-dogs bark.
Bow-wow.
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them-Ding-dong, bell

I picked this because the second stanza is quoted twice in Robert Westall's The Machine Gunners (which I read and reviewed on Tuesday).

Next is A A Milne's

The King's Breakfast

The King asked
The Queen, and
The Queen asked
The Dairymaid:
"Could we have some butter for
The Royal slice of bread?"
The Queen asked the Dairymaid,
The Dairymaid
Said, "Certainly,
I'll go and tell the cow
Now
Before she goes to bed."

The Dairymaid
She curtsied,
And went and told the Alderney:
"Don't forget the butter for
The Royal slice of bread."

The Alderney said sleepily:
"You'd better tell
His Majesty
That many people nowadays
Like marmalade
Instead."

The Dairymaid
Said "Fancy!"
And went to
Her Majesty.
She curtsied to the Queen, and
She turned a little red:
"Excuse me,
Your Majesty,
For taking of
The liberty,
But marmalade is tasty, if
It's very
Thickly
Spread."

The Queen said
"Oh!"
And went to his Majesty:
"Talking of the butter for
The royal slice of bread,
Many people
Think that
Marmalade
Is nicer.
Would you like to try a little
Marmalade
Instead?"

The King said,
"Bother!"
And then he said,
"Oh, deary me!"
The King sobbed, "Oh, deary me!"
And went back to bed.
"Nobody,"
He whimpered,
"Could call me
A fussy man;
I only want
A little bit
Of butter for
My bread!"

The Queen said,
"There, there!"
And went to
The Dairymaid.
The Dairymaid
Said, "There, there!"
And went to the shed.
The cow said,
"There, there!
I didn't really
Mean it;
Here's milk for his porringer
And butter for his bread."

The queen took the butter
And brought it to
His Majesty.
The King said
"Butter, eh?"
And bounced out of bed.
"Nobody," he said,
As he kissed her
Tenderly,
"Nobody," he said,
As he slid down
The banisters,
"Nobody,
My darling,
Could call me
A fussy man -
BUT
I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!"

I offer this because it was A A Milne's birthday yesterday.

Finally, today is the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, so I thought I would link to an earlier Poetry Friday offering for the full text of Poe's poem, The Raven.

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