Poetry

Poe isn’t my favorite author, but I bought his complete works by accident (can’t’ remember why) and so my rule is that everything on the shelf has to have been read. The book presents his works in three stages. His poems, his short fiction and essays and one long from essay and one short novel at the end of the book. I must say I was not a huge fan of his poetry (not that I am any authority) either from confirmation bias or some other mechanism his more popular poems like the Raven and the bells seem to stand head and shoulders over the other works, like a band that made that really good song once upon a time. That isn’t to say there wasn’t anything worthwhile in this section, here is one of my favorites. ...

Short review here. Not much to say about this other than it was enjoyable reading. The book contained 18 short stories by H.P. Lovecraft. They seemed to get better and better. My favorites were The Rats in the Walls The Call of Cthulhu The Color Out of Space The Outsider Author Three things of note about the author, one he was reciting poetry by two, reading by three, and writing stories by six years of age. Secondly, his adult life was incredibly unstable. He didn’t ever seem to have much money and reading how he lived, he seemed a little bit like a loser. As in living with his mom, and then with a sugar mamma, and then moved in with his aunt. Makes me realize that maybe getting “Employee of the Year” for 40 years isn’t always the definition of success. Thirdly, he was a very materialistic thinker. It was this that partially attracted him to the strange and weird as a sort of escape from a bland clockwork world. ...