Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the inevitability of death and encourages reflection on mortality through poetry.
Edgar Allan Poe suggests that poetry serves a vital purpose in reminding readers of their own mortality. By confronting the reality of death, poetry compels individuals to ponder the meaning of life, cherish their experiences, and appreciate the fleeting nature of existence. This acknowledgment of mortality can evoke deep emotional responses and inspire deeper insights into the human condition.
In practice
During a literary discussion, this quote could spark a contemplation on the role of poetry in understanding life's transience.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.
Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.
...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
The nature of finite things is to have the seed of their passing-away as their essential being: the hour of their birth is the hour of their death.
Marseilles isn't a city for tourists. There's nothing to see. Its beauty can't be photographed. It can only be shared. It's a place where you have to take sides, be passionately for or against. Only then can you see what there is to see. And you realize, too late, that you're in the middle of a tragedy. An ancient tragedy in which the hero is death. In Marseilles, even to lose you have to know how to fight.
Surveillant anxiety is always a conjoined twin: The anxiety of those surveilled is deeply connected to the anxiety of the surveillers. But the anxiety of the surveillers is generally hard to see; it's hidden in classified documents and delivered in highly coded languages in front of Senate committees.
The purpose of prayer is emphatically not to bend God's will to ours, but rather to align our will to his.
The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.
It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. Itβs the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder canβt be packaged, and it canβt be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.
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