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alone — not the buyer or the market — shall define the value of a poet’s words. Theirs may be — and often is — a noble purpose, a path apart. So, in this mode of thinking, I too, derive from a distinguished background. But, your wits, Edgar, were so very sharp. Here we are truly different. You loved puzzles to solve and to devise. You used your wits to humble and humiliate your literary targets, those you deemed of no merit as well as others who threatened, opposed or injured you. Some you destroyed with ‘friendly fire’. For my part, I have invented nothing, have hoaxed no-one for decades now, have left behind in the dust the thirsty sword of verbal injury on which once I leaned so heavily. My anger, like yours, flared instantly and my sense of justice was lethally honed — but I am, Edgar, an older man than you ever became. Not mild — but now, not bellicose. So, if I am, in any sense, you, I am ‘old E.A.P.’, a more tired, less ‘wired’ version. But, lord, you were tired toward your end. In those final few dageurotypes made of your features, the toll your troubles took is cruelly revealed. Your large eyes glitter and gutter with pain. Your chin juts lumpishly against adversity. The road-map of every difficult mile between Richmond, Va. and Baltimore MA. is manifest in your determined — yet hang-dog — expression. You were, at the end, alone on some precipice whose height and dangers only you could see. So, you were old at your exit, though only forty years of age. I, by contrast, at sixty, am younger in appearance — and though no more robust than you, I am much the healthier of the two. Edgar, if you are listening still, I beg your pardon. I must
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Epistle to Poe II 3 |
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