Gentle reader, if you are more consistent at reading this than I am at writing it you may recall that October is Poe month in our house. While we read at least one new story each year, we always read “The Raven”. It is one of my most beloved pieces of literature ever.
John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe in The Raven
You may also know that I am a firm believer in Rosenblatt’s concept about the reader and text. Each time a reader engages in the dance of reading with a text the two create a unique poem. When you read first read a book you make one poem. When you read it again, later in life, with new experiences, you make a new poem.
Tonight’s reading of “The Raven” proved that true again for me. The loss I have experienced since last October brought out new, dark, deeper layers in the poem than I have ever experienced. Since last October the relationships with my mother and sister have become estranged (to put it politely). Then I lost my brother to suicide. He and I had just reconnected a little under two years prior. I wasn’t done getting to know him again. My sons weren’t done getting to know their uncle. My husband wasn’t done getting to know the brother-in-law he had always wanted to meet. With the death of my beloved Bear two years prior, the entire family of my childhood living experience, the household, was gone. Both Bear and Bro were taken in such sudden ways that the shock has yet to wear off. I am still looking for readings or such that talk about grieving a suicide in a way that is helpful for me. I know I am not the only one who lost Bro, and that I wasn’t the closest, but I do grieve what could have been and what I stupidly missed out on for so many years.
And so while I continue my quest for the suicide grief handbook, I found that “The Raven” gave me an outlet for my grief that I would never have expected. I could barely read it. I cried throughout. I fooled myself for years that I understood the poem. That I grasped the grief and sadness.
Tonight I finally began to understand the poem. Particularly the last stanza.
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted–nevermore!
Oh, I do hope my soul is lifted out of the shadow that lingers over it. I hope the grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore leaves me, alas I know it will not be forevermore. But at least for a while.
We’ll have to read a different Poe story tomorrow night.
ohbloodyhell8 