Showing posts with label Edgar Allan Poe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edgar Allan Poe. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Writing: Creative Complex: Elddir

Hello, Srellet-Elddir.

I know we've done posts about riddles before, but today's is a little different. Today, make up a riddle or a little poem using stressed and unstressed syllables.
Riddles are a little bit like optical illusions. What do you see?

Here are some examples:
  • "Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that your heart's blood should run cold." -Mr. Fox
  • "It is not so, it was not so, and God forbid it should ever be so." -"Mr. Fox" (Also quoted in Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare)
  • "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary" -"The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (And the rest of the poem)
  • "You heard as if an army muttered" -"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" by Robert Browning
  • "Double, double, toil and trouble;/ Fire burn and cauldron bubble" -Macbeth by Shakespeare
    • Here is a link to the Hogwarts Choir singing a song based on the witches' potion in Macbeth
If you can't quite remember stressed and unstressed syllables, see Dragomir's post about them here.

Share your creations in the comments!
Spruce Nogard

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Guest Post: Edgar Allan Poe

Good Day, Friends!

Like I promised, Dragomir is doing another guest post today. I hope you enjoy his thoughts!

Dragomir:

Greetings, Readers. Under other circumstances, the title of this post would be: "On the Subject of the Esteemed Edgar Allan Poe." However, Spruce prohibited this title, stating that it was "too formal." Nevertheless, I will continue with this post with no complaints.  

Many of you have, no doubt, heard of the revered Edgar Allan Poe, writer of gothic and mystery stories, as well as poems. "The Raven," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Murders in Rue Morgue," as well as "Annabel Lee," are some of his works, amongst others. He is considered the father of modern mystery novels.

Edgar Allan Poe was, also, the first to use onomatopoeia, hence the "poe" in onomatopoeia. His prose and poetry is exceedingly marvelous. As an illustration, I have included a passage both from "The Raven" and "The Masque of the Red Death."

"The Raven":

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked, upstarting-
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!- quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
                Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 

"The Masque of the Red Death":

. . . There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these — the dreams — writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away — they have endured but an instant — and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments. 

These passages illustrate the magnificence of the esteemed Edgar Allan Poe. Dear Reader, if you do, indeed, find you favor Edgar Allan Poe's technique, I must reveal to you the brilliant website of http://www.poestories.com/

Thank you, Spruce, for deigning to allow me to write another post on your blog.

Farewell, Readers.

Thank you, Dragomir! We all, um, appreciated your post, but it was a little gothic for some of us.

Dragomir: (Sorry, everyone, but blogger is glitching and won't let me put Dragomir's writing in red.) I write only gothic literature, taking no pleasure in literature other than gothic and the associated literature, as well as mystery. You, should have gathered that by now.

Sorry! I know. . . I guess everyone has different preferences. Anyways, thanks, Dragomir!

Dragomir Volkov
Spruce Nogard

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