Team Poe

...because he'd be so much better with Bella than Irving could ever be.

Lame and obvious joking aside, I'm firmly a Poe fan. Irving's work doesn't strike me as that enjoyable to read, to me personally of course. Poe, though, is deep, and (as we discussed in class) uses a lot of awesome language. I love his poetry especially. There was a time when I tried to memorize "The Raven" (and I have successfully memorized most of it, haha), and of course there's my favorite Poe poem, "A Dream Within a Dream." For those of you unfamiliar with it, it goes:

Take this kiss upon the brow
And, in parting from you now,
This much let me avow:
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream
Yet, if hope has flown away
In a night or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand.
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep!--while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

(Any errors in the above should be attributed to my faulty memory, but otherwise I guess you'll just have to trust me that I didn't look this one up.)

"A Dream Within a Dream" is one of Poe's lesser-known works, but I find it resonated with me a lot. I love the rhyme and the subject, the language and the imagery, the metaphors and the emotion in it. And I suppose that's what I love about Poe's work the most. He writes creepiness really well, but he recognizes beauty within his works also.