The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe)

An audiobook reading of classic poems, narrated by Michael Cochrane www.cochranevoice.com
Music provided by slip.stream
"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a distraught lover who is paid a mysterious visit by a talking raven. The lover, often identified as a student,[1][2] is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further antagonize the protagonist with its constant repetition of the word "Nevermore". The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references.
Poe claimed to have written the poem logically and methodically, with the intention to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay, "The Philosophy of Composition". The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in the novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens.[3] Poe based the complex rhythm and meter on Elizabeth Barrett's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship", and made use of internal rhyme as well as alliteration throughout.
"The Raven" was first attributed to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. Its publication made Poe popular in his lifetime, although it did not bring him much financial success. The poem was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. Critical opinion is divided as to the poem's literary status, but it nevertheless remains one of the most famous poems ever written.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven

[@ssake1_IAL_Research]

It's a competent, clear rendition, but the reader is not putting himself into the character. It has all the emotion of a man opening up his Amazon delivery of dress shirts. However, the more important point is that I've proved beyond a reasonable doubt, after over a decade of independent research, that "The Raven" was not really written by Edgar Allan Poe. In fact, if my research results are accurate, he had nothing whatsoever to do with the writing or first publication of that poem. It was, as I believe, written by Mathew Franklin Whittier, younger brother of poet John Greenleaf Whittier, based on real-life circumstances. It was Mathew, not Poe, who published it in the February, 1845 edition of "American Review," signing "(blank) Quarles." Poe merely scooped it by three days, replacing Mathew's pseudonym with his own name, and brazenly pretending to have written it. HIs supposed explanation of how he wrote it, in his essay, "The Philosophy of Composition," was a childish scam.