The Raven ~ Edgar Allan Poe

"Open here I flung the shutter when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;"

~ Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849) American poet, writer, editor, literary critic.  Poe wrote the poem "The Raven" only two years before his death in October, 1849.

Illustration: John Tenniel, 1858 (Wikipedia).

 

"...suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door ~

Only this and nothing more..."

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me ~ filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
"Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door ~ "

~ Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

(View from the bookshop window.  Thank you ladies for your fun display.  Can't help but bring a smile! Corner of Hwy. 3 & Cayuga Street. Click on photo for larger image.)

On Writing ~ Ernest Hemingway

"A letter some time ago from Maxwell E. Perkins let me in on the little secret that you work eight hours every day ~ Joyce I believe worked twelve.  There was some comparison between how long it took you two great authors to finish your work.

Well Fitz you are certainly a worker.  I have never been able to write longer than two hours myself without getting utterly pooped - any longer than that and the stuff begins to become tripe...

You dirty lousy liar to say you work (write) eight hours a day."
Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961) American author, jouralist.

~Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 9 October, 1928.   Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917 - 1961, edited by Carlos Baker, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981.

E. Hemingway