The wisdom of Edgar Allan Poe...(part 2)

"Words have no power to impress the mind
        without the exquisite horror of their reality."
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

My trusty personal advisor reminds me that Poe had a very reflective frame of mind, think "The Raven," that macabre nightmare he reduced to words in 1845.

I think it would most plausibly be a writer who would talk about words the way Poe does in the epigram above….words of course serve the purpose of communication, but they are more than a medium, they are a tool, the messenger of love, even a weapon at times….

Certainly we know enough "horrors of reality" to understand that words have meaning, but they are symbols….let's make sure we deliberately envision the reality when we speak of it, especially if it's terrible, like poverty and global climate change, and more especially if it's wonderful, like your grandchild's smile of recognition…

Now you're talkin' !

...and by the way, my personal advisor adds:

"...and then there are times when words are purposefully used to create non-reality, to conjure a world gone by, a new future world, an alien world...words joined end-to-end, lumped in a paragraph, paragraphs become pages, pages become books..."

Other wisdom of Mr. Poe

The wisdom of Chief Joseph