HAPPY E. A. POE DAY

It's really not today. There may not even be an Edgar Allan Poe Day. But when the Colts bolted for Indy, the new football team in Baltimore called itself the Ravens after the famous writer's most famous poem. So I guess if you're worthy of an NFL team, you're worthy of a day.

If there's not a day fro him it wouldn't bother me. When I taught Poe, I found out high school students who thought they knew him, knew Vincent Price and some of the old movies. They never got to know him much better after having my pedagogery either. He was just too tough for me. My gosh, you had to sit down with a huge dictionary to grasp his choice of obscure terms. And laborious, oh yes. In "The Fall of the House of Usher," he spends four or five pages describing the tarn (lake) in front of the house. And this is to get the readers' interest?

In the same tale, he also strays from his own guidelines of what makes a good short story by writing a framework story, or story within a story, in the one that the narrator reads to the failing Usher. Ok, I quit. I'm getting as boring as old E.A.

The French liked him best for his poetry and the musical sound. And if the French like him for sound, he must be good, because if any language sounds good to the ear it's French. I think they, too thought it took him too long to get a good scare out the reader.

If brevity is the soul of wit, then so is horror. Remember The Hook that was stuck in the car door as the teens drove away? Now that's horror!