Rantin’ and Ravin’ BY JOSEPH WAMBAUGH
Once upon a twilight teary, while I mourned so blitzed and bleary, O’er my script which got demolished by a showbiz bloody bore, Suddenly there came a dinging-“You’ve got mail!”-an e-mail singing, Much annoyed with ears a-ringing, I decided to ignore, And swilled another mug of suds, permeating every pore. “’Tis only spam,” I muttered then. This and nothing more. Presently with breath a-reeking, I chose to do some e-mail peeking, Which rained on me a host of doubts that pierced me to the core. For Michael wanted “ruminations,” and that filled me with trepidation, He wished for thoughts about a scribe from golden days of yore. A testimonial to this titan? But I had demons I was fightin’. At least two hundred words, he urged. This and nothing more. Now I felt my stomach burning, the hops and malts inside me churning, As I remembered childhood learning, and volumes I’d explored. Then my guilt it overtook me, Mike’s insistent plea, it shook me, The e-mail I should have deleted could now not be ignored. I thought somehow I must comply, for Poe who’s on a throne so high, Deserves much thanks from such as I, and others gone before. Thus I set off plodding, spurred by Michael’s “gentle prodding,” Hoping I could yet discover sentiments that soar. I imagined many noble words, and thought I glimpsed a great black bird, Whose unforgiving glower drove me to an icy shower, To find within the power and draw temperance to the fore. Alas, the water only froze me and made my bald spot sore. This I say to Michael C., I ask that you envision me, A forlorn wretch no longer musing, in his cups from all the boozing, Who shall soon be mute and snoozing upon the study floor. Before that swoon I swear to you, I’ll quaff another brew or two, In honor of courageous Poe, who threw open every door. But I won’t open “gentle” e-mails. Not now, and NEVERMORE! *** Joseph Wambaugh, a former LAPD detective sergeant, is the New York Times best-selling author of The Onion Field, The Blooding, The Choirboys, and many other fiction and nonfiction works. He has won a number of awards, including the Edgar Award and the Rodolfo Walsh Prize for investigative journalism. He lives with his wife in California.
A Little Thought on Poe BY THOMAS H. COOK
I was once asked what one-word description of a book would most likely cause me to read it. Without a blink, I answered, “Haunting.” Why? Because I have found to my surprise that although people will often describe a book as “great,” they will, upon further questioning, be wholly unable to recall a single line or scene or even the basic plot of a book that, though evidently “great,” proved to be not in the least memorable. It is just the opposite with Poe, whose greatness, it seems to me, resides in the fact that his readers actually remember him. In poem after poem and story after story, we remember Poe. We remember that “when I was a child and she was a child,” these two children lived “in a kingdom by the sea.” We remember the Raven’s bleak warning that in the end everything dissolves into the oblivion of “Nevermore.” We remember the beating of a tell-tale heart and “the moaning and the groaning” of the bells. To remember a writer in this way is to be haunted by him, to have his words and scenes and characters forever alive in your mind. That is what true literary greatness is, and it is a greatness that was Poe’s.
