He was almost my earliest literary awareness, and certainly my first literary passion. The music of “The Raven” (the music inherent in the poem, I mean, not any musical setting thereof) so enchanted me that I committed it to memory . . . and probably my first artistic exploit was impressing a teacher or two in grade school with this feat. As I am shy by nature, this was in effect my leverage into performance, I suppose.
Much later, when I was undertaking my Master’s in Charlottesville, I saw the room in The Lawn which is preserved as a memorial to UVa’s illustrious expellee (gambling was his weakness, here).
[ click on the photo, and a characteristic bird will come into view ]
Yesterday I ran into this amusing remark from a man whose precise centenary will defy celebration:
I don't know how old I am because the goat ate the Bible that had my birth certificate in it. The goat lived to be twenty-seven.
— Satchel Paige (1906?-1982)
1 comment:
And so did you play Rachmaninov's cantata-symphony version of Poe's poem "The Bells"?
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