A Good, College Try

Comments on Origin of the Raven:

This poem explains of course where Poe's raven comes from. It seeks to (shamefully) make fun of Poe and all his dreariness.

The man in the poem is a handsome, level-headed genius. His disposition is good; he sees the glass half-full. Both artist and wordsmith, he won his craft via a tragic accident and resulting eons of time convalescing. There was nothing to do but read really. And so he did. He read and studied artists. Writing and drawing/painting became his escape. He's a virtuous man with a weakness for aesthetics, which explains the uncharacteristic losing of his head over a beautiful woman. He buys her a ring he can not afford. The setting is long ago, and the thousand dollar ring is a ridiculous debt. (FYI, she is also virtuous but comes from wealth. She doesn't ask for the ring or even care; she'd take tin to be his wife. But he can't help himself, and thus love digs for him a hole.)

The artist becomes preoccupied with fulfilling the debt, but he doesn't let it dampen his overall pleasant view of things. Even so, he cannot contain eurekas when he realizes he has paid his debt with a new creation: the greeting card. This is a jab at Poe of course. His character is tormented by the bird of a creator of greeting cards! ha-HA! To think it!

Flaws and Seeming Flaws

1. seeming: At first it appears that I have neglected to explain how our man crafts an image of stones, foliage, etc. with one vial of peacock blue. It is monochromatic.

2. seeming: "His just deserts were due" seems somewhat out of place. Really, it's simultaneously my attempt at foreshadowing and also developing his character via the images of his past moral nobility. In short, I made him a deserving fellow and he got what he deserved. Also a jab at Poe's character in its simple, bubblegummy concept.

3. seeming: Some will loathe my depiction of a mother whose faith is rewarded almost immediately by the "turned corner" in relation to her son's health. Life isn't that simple and neither is faith. I know that. Oh believe me, I know. But again, I wanted to contrast The Raven's complications. I wanted The Origin... to, in a sense, be a negative of The Raven. I just wanted to make fun of Poe. (You think I hate him, but I don't. I just want him to laugh at himself! And if he won't, I will!)

4. seeming: The reference to the boy's ague seemingly makes no sense. Afterall, he is not suffering from disease but accidental physical trauma. You couldn't know that the horse's hooves carried staph in their grimey crannies. He developed an infection before night fell. The infection caused fever, and God ended the ague. But! He remained in a coma for months. Thus mother bolts upright at first words long in coming.

5. flaw: The reference to Vinogradov... this is suggestive of Russia in a certain place and time. The first flaw is that I really didn't pay attention to the setting of The Raven. I'll go beyond the flaw and call it sheer pigheaded stupidity not to have gone back an analyzed that so that I could be more accurate. In truth, I didn't feel like it. The second flaw is that I really had in my head a picture of Russia itself. I could see the snow, the tarantass, etc. I could see the boy marveling over Vinogradov's colored pencil renderings and wanting to emulate him. I dare say, Poe's The Raven was not set in Russia. So, you'll notice that the flight of the raven from one window to the other would have been exceedingly lengthy. Not really convenient for my allusion that he just left his master who was saying "'Nevermore!' again and again". Don't trouble yourself with the flaw. Just tell yourself it isn't there and the poem will be much better! ;-)

6. seeming: The bit about the agent seems grossly contrived, but actually I used her as an analogy for the greeting card industry as a whole and their virtual profit boon.

7. flaw: I used a rhyming dictionary to come up with "oo" options. In no way did I come to the table with the vocabulary in hand, but I tell you this, I left with it! It's a tremendous gift this poem gave me.

What I liked
1. I liked that I varied the rhyming language more than Poe. I hated his redundancy. (But then, I don't suppose he had a rhyming dictionary, now did he!) It was like the monochromatic scene in peacock blue. Lovely, I suppose, but I never did like the white lights at Christmas. Not when there are red and blue and green and...

2. My very favorite thing is the mention of the late hours he kept pouring over books... the owl outside his window and the terrible "fowl review" pun. Smashing!

3. The bird leaves with "Nevermore!" ringing in his ears and so finds it on his beak at Poe's character's house. The irony is that the "nevermore" he leaves with is the happy sing-song of an optimistic man who makes the best of bad situations and is rewarded by his fair maiden's hand in marriage. In wanting to dance about with his feathered friend loose in the room, he forgets the open window and that's the end of that.

4. Finally, the worst flaw... I have left myself completely vulnerable to a real poet who loves Poe so well that he is inspired to go for the heart in a sequel to this poem. In a creative flurry s/he could write, in a grand twist, that the maiden he marries is named Lenore. Thus the crow becomes a symbol of flying from one happy reality into one dreadful reality in a near instant, and that is realistic. What was once victorious becomes vexing. Beauty becomes horridness and all that sort of thing. For this reason I now declare that the woman's name was not Lenore or any derivative of Lenore. Her name was... her name was... Gertrude Finklesteininski. ha-HA! And she owned a camel with hemorrhoids.