2.11.2005

If Paris hadn't stolen Edgar Allan Poe, St. Petersburg would have had to invent him. See Mandelshtam's poem in which Poe appears (you'll have to do some research about the "tickling scarf"). Poe spent his dying days chasing after a phantom beloved named Helen Whitman, a Providence poet. I walk by her home on Benefit St. on my lunch break nearly every day.

Are there no grad students in English lit willing to sacrifice their careers for this? No - they haven't read Keats yet.

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