{time for some Poe}

(Since with the Cybils and all, I have gotten to be “rubbish,” as they say here, about putting up my Poetry Friday subs, I am just slapping them up when I can. PF today is at Jone’s Blog. Check it out!)

Writers tend to stand on the periphery of things — observers, chroniclers, wallflowers. It’s a known fact that I am an odd duck, but every once in awhile, it really strikes me: Man, all these people know all these ABBA songs. And I don’t. How did I miss knowing each and every word of Dancing Queen?

That was my most recent odd-duckish observation, during chorus rehearsal the other night as we started learning a medley from the musical/movie, Mamma Mia. Hearing those songs was somewhat amusing — the Italian word in a Swedish song sung with a Scottish accent — but it was a telling moment as well: this might be my tribe, but once again, I’m sort of in my own rondavel, as it were.

Last night made me think of this poem. Dr. Hardcastle read it to us in junior English, and I loved it then. It reminded me of a sixties song we learned in junior high chorus — about being a rock and an island. It also made me a little sad — as E.A. Poe, whose failed romances are the stuff of much of his poetry, and the strange and sad circumstances of his demise are the stuff of legend — well, it looks like he had an awkward childhood, too. It gave him lots of fodder to write, but … ouch. Good grief.

Of further interest, this poem has been featured in two recent Cybils SFF reads — one even was about Poe, through some speculative fiction miracle of intradimensional travel. I think mostly the poem was included for the angst factor, though. Imagine coming across this for the first time, and thinking, “Yeah. Exactly.” Although I didn’t “get” the ending when I was a teen (and arguably, none of us really “gets” everything of Poe’s), I thought this was my paean to the shallow world around me.

Yeah. I kind of make myself laugh now. Odd duck that I am, though, I still love this poem. And, it’s still kinda me.

Alone

by Edgar Alan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.

Then- in my childhood, in the dawn

Of a most stormy life- was drawn

From every depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still:

From the torrent, or the fountain,

From the red cliff of the mountain,

From the sun that round me rolled

In its autumn tint of gold,

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by,

From the thunder and the storm,

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view.