Poe brings to my mind a thin dark, brooding figure, always struggling against the demons of poverty, drink and perhaps drugs, a dour depressive, infinitely sad. Yet no artist who touches hearts, minds, and souls remains forever isolated, not even Russian authors, not Greek tragedists, and certainly not Poe.
He suffered in his short life, but he ventured forth, he loved, he lived, and he toyed with ideas and words. In an era when Generations, X, Y, Z shred and shed a cascade of history and ‘old’ notions, Poe remains relevant. Even Generation α, bobbing isolated in a digital ocean, hasn’t discarded the dark poet.
The spark for today’s post began with a single-panel comic. Recently, I wrote about writerly humour and a dearth of actually funny jokes about authoring. Hardly had the ink dried and the essay reached the streets when a wonderful cartoon appeared. A wryly funny one, brilliant this, by Dave Coverly:
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| © Dave Coverly |
Our beloved Dave Barry blurbed the award-winning creator: “Dave Coverly is young and really, really funny and he can draw. I hate him.” I’m not certain this particular cartoon is available for sale, but Mr Coverly’s books and prints can be purchased on his professional site, SpeedBump.com
The comic set me to wondering whether Poe readers realized he enjoyed word play, particularly anagrams, epigrams, puzzles, jokes, and occasionally scrambling names of real people to conjure new names for his works. He smoothly sprinkled French, Italian, Latin, and even Arabic in his poems.
One particularly stands out, the first of two poems titled Enigma (1833), a puzzle and anagram. Coded in sixteen lines are eleven poets. The initial letter of each poet spell out a very famous English author.
As much as I enjoy puzzles, I embarrassingly failed the inner riddle so badly I dare not reveal my score. Without a traditional classical education, a solver is greatly handicapped. The solution appears after the break.
- The noblest name in Allegory's page,
- The hand that traced inexorable rage;
- A pleasing moralist whose page refined,
Displays the deepest knowledge of the mind; - A tender poet of a foreign tongue,
Indited in the language that he sung. - A bard of brilliant but unlicensed page
At once the shame and glory of our age, - The prince of harmony and stirling sense,
- The ancient dramatist of eminence,
- The bard that paints imagination's powers,
- And him whose song revives departed hours,
- Once more an ancient tragic bard recall,
In boldness of design surpassing all. - These names when rightly read, a name make known
Which gathers all their glories in its own.
Solution ➙
