Monday, March 26, 2012

A Little Literature Won't Kill You

but it's likely that worms will play a role in the decomposition process.

Shockingly, I read the following to a man in his sixties the other day only to be told by him that he had never heard or read it before.  That the following is apparently not part of the common culture of all people literate in English bothered me enough to reproduce it here:


The text in the image above is, of course, "The Conqueror Worm" by Edgar Allan Poe.  I really do think that these five stanzas deserve to be more widely known since they are incredibly well written.  To help achieve that end I combined the text with a stock photo in a handy downloadable .jpg format.

The photo used in above image is from the stock section of DeviantArt.com.

22 comments:

  1. Awesome image and text man, seriously good job buddy.

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  2. I never read this before but i pretty much guessed it was poe, mainly because of it being horror. He has a very intriguing style.

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  3. That is actually really good. I do wish I had known more Poe, I've not really read too much of him, and I see it as a huge shame.

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    1. I have read quite a bit of Poe's work and listened to several more of his short stories and poems read by people who took the time to post them online in the public domain. For starters I highly recommend:

      X "The Raven" - it's famous for good reason. Frankly, The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode in which Homer plays the role of the narrator of the poem as James Earl Jones recites part of the poem is really well done.
      X "El Dorado"
      X "The Cask of Amontillado" - a short story that builds (wow, I'm clever)to a great conclusion
      X "The Masque of the Red Death" - there is a reason that Thrice names a song after this
      X Annabel Lee"
      X "Ligeia"
      X "The Pit and the Pendulum"
      X "Murder in the Rue Morgue" - this short story is given credit for being the original detective story. This one is a little longer and a bit more dense than the previous works in this list.

      I realize that you didn't really ask for a reading list but sometimes you get more than you ask for at Clean Sheets and Dirty Girls.

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  4. I love Poe. It's a great way to share this piece.

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  5. That's a good and meaningful poem

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  6. Never heard of this poem by Poe before, very meaningful

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  7. Despite the many naysayers I encountered in grad school, Poe remains one of my favorites.

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  8. Love Poe, but more into HP Lovecraft myself =)

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  9. My nieces love Poe.

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  10. I hadn't read it before, so thank you!

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  11. Poe has always been one of my favorite writers. I wonder what this new John Cusack travesty is going to be like.

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  12. A little literature can totally kill you, if you happening to be reading the necronomicon

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  13. I suppose I am lame for not having heard this before...but somehow I knew it was Edgar Allan Poe as soon as I started reading it. It's amazing when someone has such a distinct writing style you can identify that they wrote something before even being told they are the author.

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  14. Had to read that in an English lit class of mine.

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  15. I read a book by edgar allen a long time ago barely remember it!

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  16. Love Poe, he's just got a way to make me shiver in terror.

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  17. Mmmmm, Poe. Oh wicked soul, so tortured and true, such evil decadence and delights.

    A man of true visage, of noble imperative, of wicked malevolence, of literary blight.

    This dark spot, a darkened spot, dye the very pages of history.

    And with his death a curse, tragic, and forever eclipsed by his mystery.

    Yea I'll stop now, for I wish not to dare sully or his very ideals tarnished

    His name, his fate, nor his works with my poor attempts varnished.

    ...penis.

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