Poet: Edgar Allan Poe

A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

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Poe’s 1849 poem in a 2014 adaptation by Catalonian poet Josep Porcar with cinematography by Tomás Baltazar, a voiceover by Tom O’Bedlam and a Catalan translation by Txema Martínez Inglés in subtitles. The actor is Luis Carvalho.

The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe would’ve loved this! It was directed by Aurélie Godefroy with music by the band Les Pleureuses, whose keyboard player and art director, Yannis Lo Pellegrino, is the main actor/reciter here, and shares credit with Godefoy for the making of the film.

The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allan Poe

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Jeanette Seah and Daniel Nudds directed this “Final project from the VFS Digital Design Program” at the Vancouver Film School. I’m not sure how well the video fits the poem, but the animation is too gorgeous not to share.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

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The Simpsons read “The Raven” (with help from James Earl Jones) in the third episode of the show’s second season (1990), “Treehouse of Horror I.”

The City in the Sea by Edgar Allan Poe

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Poem by Edgar Allan Poe, video by Orville T. Clark, who says, “This was built entirely in After effects. There’s a bit of everything thrown in here, live action, photography, stop frame animation etc. All just for fun, enjoy!” Too bad he didn’t include a reading of the selections he used from the poem, I thought, but it’s still pretty cool.

The City in the Sea

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently —
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free —
Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls —
Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls —
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers —
Up many and many a marvelous shrine
Whose wreathéd friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in the air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye —
Not the gaily-jeweled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass —
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea —
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave — there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide —
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow —
The hours are breathing faint and low —
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.