E.A. Poe and Kickapoo

Yesterday, my blog had the word "kickapoo" in it and I had a weird deja vu feeling about it as I typed. Today I had an epiphany and remembered what was lurking in my dusty databanks:

Man Who Was Used Up a short story by Poe has the subtitle "A TALE OF THE LATE BUGABOO AND KICKAPOO CAMPAIGN". This is one of my favorite EAP short stories. Poe is one of those authors that you forget about from time to time, but always return to with pleasure.

I read once that Poe might have died of rabies. Researchers have varying rationales for his death, but the diagnosis of rabies is somehow fitting for a writer of Poe's macabre depth. (*Word History: The word macabre is an excellent example of a word formed with reference to a specific context that has long since disappeared for everyone but scholars. Macabre is first recorded in the phrase Macabrees daunce in a work written around 1430 by John Lydgate. Macabree was thought by Lydgate to be the name of a French author, but in fact he misunderstood the Old French phrase Danse Macabre, “the Dance of Death,” a subject of art and literature. In this dance, Death leads people of all classes and walks of life to the same final end. The macabre element may be an alteration of Macabe, “a Maccabee.” The Maccabees were Jewish martyrs who were honored by a feast throughout the Western Church, and reverence for them was linked to reverence for the dead. Today macabre has no connection with the Maccabees and little connection with the Dance of Death, but it still has to do with death.)

Most of us were introduced to this story-telling master in high school English class. Sadly, we were just given the most widely read stories, and not exposed to the full genius of the man. Tonight, I am curling up with my heavy volumes of the Complete Works of Poe and hoping I can find something I've never read, or at least read only once. May be impossible.

What delectable Poe creation rattles your bones?

Which brings me another epiphany... forget about Amazon, I am headed one day soon to Archer City, Texas. Stay tuned to this station for further bulletins.