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ESSAYS - February 2026: Barrie Brewer, Zary Fekete,
Paul Hostovsky, Enzo Silon Surin, Anne Whitehouse
"To write is to hope..." ― Enzo Silon Surin
Paul Hostovsky, Enzo Silon Surin, Anne Whitehouse
"To write is to hope..." ― Enzo Silon Surin
Barrie Brewer
|
The Choice Between
What if the most authentic version of ourselves lives in the life we never dared to choose? The question rises with the steam from the pasta pot, curling toward the ceiling as if searching for a way out. Tonight, it lingers longer than usual: humid, heavy, and haunting. I’m at the stove, heating water and stirring sauce, while the house hums around me. The dishwasher drones, my kids argue over screen time, the television preaches another round of political noise. A notification buzzes my phone: immediate action required, expired card, auto pay mortgage. I swipe it away, pretending that solves everything. Another deadline. Another reason to stay tethered. “Did you salt the water this time?” My wife slicing tomatoes, turns away with a wry expression. The knife hitting the board louder on the last cut. “Yeah,” I answer, my words here in the present, while my thoughts are thousands of miles away, somewhere deep in the Amazon. It’s been years since our family expedition, but the memory waits for me like an unopened letter. I can still see the river, meandering slow, alive, and crystal clear, with canoes lining the rocky bank. The air thick with something ancient. Time moved differently there—not by deadlines, but from light to dark. And then, there he was: the tribal elder. Painted in ochre and ash, he stood across the water, spear balanced on his shoulders. His gaze was calm, unblinking, unsettling—and familiar. No notifications. No countdown to the next deadline. I did not stay with him. I stepped into the waiting canoe, the one homeward bound. I glanced back only once, my hand tightening around the rough wooden gunwale, as if I could still change my mind. Sometimes, late at night, I wonder if that was the moment I started to drift away from myself. Back at the stove, the pot rattles and starts boiling over. “Dad! It’s overflowing!” my son calls without looking up from his tablet. I turn down the flame. Steam billows and washes over my face. “Got it,” My voice sounds distant. Steam rises from the pasta pot and changes shape—at first a face I half-remember, then the prow of a canoe cutting through rain. Then a reminder I’m still here, still cooking the same meal I’ve made a hundred times. The hiss becomes rain, and I’m back on the riverbank in half-light. I make the other choice. I don’t board the canoe. The current tugs at my legs, firm and cold. In this other version, my wife’s voice rises behind me, “Wait! You can’t be serious!” But the current is stronger than doubt. I wade chest-deep into the river. Her protests fade into the jungle’s embrace. The air tastes of rain and risk. “Dad, are you listening?” my daughter asks. Jerking the spoon against the side of the pot. “Always,” I say, though both of us know it’s a lie. Balancing a stack of plates, she watches me. After a moment, her eyes narrow—not angry, just resigned, like she’s done trying to pull me back. She looks away and sets them down gently, like she’s trying not to disturb something delicate. No more questions. In the life I imagine, the rain never stops. It falls in sheets, relentless, threatening to submerge everything in its path. Our first shelter is a patchwork of palm fronds and failures. My soft hands blister and split on bamboo. The elder watches from a distance, offering no help, only witness. “Pain teaches faster than pride,” I imagine him saying. I learn in silence—striking flint against soaked bark, reading the moods of clouds, waiting for the kindling to believe in fire. “Why does it rain so much?” my son asks one night, teeth chattering under a leaking roof.“Because it can,” I tell him. The answer is satisfactory. Days blur. I stop counting time in weekends. The machete that once blistered my hands now feels like a limb. I start to hear meaning in every sound, the toucan’s warning, the hush before something unseen moves. Even silence speaks. I no longer walk through the jungle. I move with it. My wife transforms too. She learns to pull nourishment from what others call poison, to find rhythm in the moon and patience in the soil. Our children thrive, barefoot, fearless, fluent in instinct. In real life, they stare at tablets, blue light painting their faces. At night, we sit by the fire. Sparks lift like fireflies escaping dusk. I tell stories not from books but from the day’s events: the monkey that mocked me, the vine that bled red sap, the serpent that watched but didn’t strike. The jungle becomes our teacher, our mirror, our measure. A place where who you are isn’t defined by what you produce. And yet, even in that imagined life, it always ends the same way. The river waits. The elder’s eyes find mine. The canoe drifts at the edge of choice. That’s where I wake. “Is dinner ready?” my wife calls from the dining room. The spell breaks. The roar of the fire becomes the low hum of the dishwasher. Steam rises again, curling upward like the question that never leaves. I drain the pasta and watch the water spiral down the sink—a whirlpool of second chances swirling down the drain. “Smells good,” my daughter says, setting out forks. She moves past me and I feel the brush of her shoulder before she steps away. “Yeah,” I say, eyes following the last ghost of steam. For a moment, I see the elder’s gaze—steady, unhurried. My chest tightens, a vice closing around my ribs. I don’t know when longing became a form of betrayal. “Can you pass the sauce?” my wife asks. I hesitate, fumbling with both hands. “Everything okay?” she asks softly. “Just tired,” I say, forcing a smile. She searches my face a few blinks longer than usual. The corner of her mouth twitches, like she wants to ask something like “You haven’t really been with us in weeks.” Instead, she looks down at her plate and the moment passes. Later, when the house falls quiet, I linger at the window. Moonlight splashes silver streaks across the countertops. Outside, wind stirs the trees, and for an instant, our suburban yard dissolves: hedges giving way to vines, lawn and flower beds turning into a rocky riverbank. I close my eyes, and there he is again, the elder, sitting cross-legged on the far shore, spear across his knees. “What are you waiting for?” I whisper. No answer, just the faint rustle of leaves. And then I understand. But understanding doesn’t quiet the longing. It only names it. He isn’t waiting for me. He’s waiting within me. The man I chose not to be did not vanish; he went underground, buried beneath bills, deadlines, and the hum of ordinary life. But he’s still there, breathing, patiently waiting. The refrigerator hums. The clock ticks. In the other room a sleeping child’s half-cry, half-whisper, reminding me that even in sleep, dreams can obsess us. I press my hand against the cold glass of the window. My reflection stares back, older, softer, alive with family, comfort, safety, and love on this side; authenticity, wildness, and solitude on the other. In the hollow beneath my ribs, something stirs, a pulse, a longing, wild and familiar. Maybe the question was never about crossing to the other side. Maybe it was about remembering it was still there. I know I’ll wake tomorrow to the same packed lunches, meetings, and laundry. But somewhere—beneath all that—I’ll still be listening for rain. I smile, the longing inside me softening into a steady breath. Outside, the trees sway, whispering. The jungle’s voice returns, not as a memory, but a reminder of the choice between. Author Note: Barrie Brewer is a storyteller, adventure traveler, and leadership educator whose work explores the paradox between discovery and responsibility. His writing often weaves lyrical realism with lived adventure—from the Amazon Basin to the mountain ranges of North America. This story emerges from his recurring theme: some of the greatest adventures are the ones we never exploit, but never stop imagining. |
A lifelong adventure traveler and keen observer of people, Barrie Brewer brings a global sensibility to his work, shaped by years of working alongside leaders, artists, and change makers. His nonfiction weaves narrative with insight, often delving into the tension between curiosity and caution, purpose and uncertainty.
Zary Fekete
|
The Map of the Class
Our Japanese teacher handed out blank world maps. No names, no capitals…just the thin outlines of continents numbered in neat black ink. We were told to fill them in with country names and capitals written in Katakana. I am in a Japanese language class in Tokyo, where my wife and I recently moved for our missions work. There are six of us, all from elsewhere, all trying to learn how to name the world again. Luka is an engineer from Singapore who now lives in Utah with his wife. They are buying an apartment in Tokyo for when they visit. Alex is Russian; his wife is Ukrainian. They fled to Portugal when the war began, a quiet ceasefire in a personal sense if not a political one. Linda is from the Czech Republic. Her husband works for a Japanese company, and she manages the family’s daily life with their two children as though she were born to navigate foreignness. Song, from South Korea, is also an engineer. His company has given him a leave to study Japanese, and we envy his near-perfect pronunciation. He swears it’s not talent…just the way the languages overlap. And then there’s Paul, from Manila. His wife already lives here and speaks Japanese well. He hopes to join her once he finds a job. When I asked what he does, he told me, almost apologetically, that he’s an auto mechanic. I told him how jealous I was. My father could fix anything…a jack of all trades who kept our family cars running with little more than intuition and a junkyard map in his head. I grew up watching him replace spark plugs and swap transmissions, wondering if I’d ever be that competent. On this morning, our pencils scratched the paper in quiet concentration. Paul sighed often, muttering to himself. When the teacher called on him to identify a country, she pointed to the British Isles. He paused for a long time, then said, “Amerika?” The room went silent. The teacher, gracious and quick, smiled and offered words that softened the moment, but I saw the color rise in Paul’s cheeks. After class we walked down the narrow stairwell together. He laughed about it, but it was a careful laugh, the kind meant to protect a wound. “I’m not good at geography,” he said. “I envy how you know all the countries. My school was very basic.” He said it lightly, but it stayed with me. His knowledge had been built on engines and torque, not atlases. I’d been given maps and books without ever realizing they were gifts. That night, I thought about the invisible balance between us…how what I called “education” was, to him, luxury; and what he called “work” was, to me, mystery. In class the next day, we sat beside each other again. The teacher had us practice new phrases simple sentences: Watashi wa gakusei desu. I am a student. The room filled with repetition, everyone’s accents folding together into something soft and unhurried. Paul’s pronunciation was careful but solid. He whispered the words before saying them aloud, the way a mechanic might test an engine before revving it. When he finally spoke, the sound had a quiet steadiness, as though he were rebuilding something invisible inside himself. During the breaks we didn’t speak much, just small talk about the weather, about the subway system, about the strange difficulty of remembering when to use wa or ga. The conversation was awkward, but kind. At one point, he said, “You know, I was nervous to come here. I thought everyone would be smarter than me.” I told him I had felt the same way. Later, walking home through the clean Tokyo streets, I kept thinking about that. How easily we measure ourselves against one another, how envy crosses borders more fluently than language ever could. I had envied his skill with machines, the way he could turn broken parts into movement. He envied the ease with which I filled in the names of faraway countries. We were, in the end, both just learning…both fumbling through new vocabularies, each of us wanting to belong somewhere, to make something work. Now, each afternoon, I sit next to Paul again. We open our textbooks, bow to the teacher, and repeat the same phrases in careful unison. The sound of our voices is uneven, halting, sometimes wrong. But there is humility in the effort, a shared patience that feels like its own kind of fluency. We keep studying, side by side, neither of us fluent yet…in language, or in life…but both a little less alone. |
Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary and currently lives in Tokyo. He has a debut novella, Words on the Page, out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection, To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction, out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky:zaryfekete.bsky.social
Paul Hostovsky
Like Braille
Whenever I come across a poet or writer using braille as a metaphor or simile—this or that is like braille or is like someone reading braille—I bristle a little. I can’t help it. Because I know they don’t know braille. Rarely if ever do I come across a description of what braille itself is like.
Let me tell you what braille is like.
Braille is raised white dots on a white page, like a country of igloos as seen from an airplane on a sunny morning in the Arctic.
Braille is like the goose bumps on the arm of the reader reading an exquisite poem she doesn’t totally get but can’t get enough of.
Braille is six dots in a cell. Two columns of three. Like a narrow three-story building at dusk with two windows on each floor, each window with two possibilities: light on or light off. Dot or no dot. There are sixty-four possible combinations of the six dots. Two to the sixth power. Or two times two times two times two times two times two. The braille reader is a safecracker intuiting the combination by feel, opening the safe and taking the money, the gold, all of it, every time.
Every written language on the planet fits inside the braille cell.
Many words in braille are contracted while others are spelled out. Braille is like the heart, contracting and relaxing.
Some braille contractions can stand alone and also within words, like the of in soft, the for in fork, the the in Theresa, the and in Andy and Sandy.
Some braille contractions are a single letter standing for a whole word--b is but, c is can, d is do, e is every, f is from, etc. It’s the ultimate compression: distilling language down to the first letter of each word in the sentence, like Levin’s secret message to Kitty in Anna Karenina.
A skilled braille reader can read with both hands, left hand beginning each line, handing it off to the right hand halfway across the page, the right hand finishing the line as the left moves down to begin reading the next line. Left hand to right hand to left hand to right hand. Expert, fleet, like a concert pianist, or like relay runners in a race, the handoff accomplished seamlessly over and over, line by line down the page, page by page through the book, book by book through a lifetime of reading.
I like the idea of touching the words. That may be just a romantic notion—I mean, braille readers aren’t necessarily more “in touch” with the words than print readers are—but I like it nonetheless. I learned braille in my early twenties, on a lark. I had a blind roommate. I loved watching him read. I had none of the attendant grief and/or denial that a person who is losing their vision will likely experience when setting out to learn braille. For me, it was just a hobby, something to do, a game, a curriculum of puzzles. More than anything it was fun! It was all about words. And I have always loved words.
I learned it visually first. Then, later, tactilely. Though it took me some time to develop the sensitivity required to read with my fingers, I don’t think braille has made me a more sensitive reader per se. But it has made me a more versatile one: I can read with my eyes closed; I can read with the book closed (my hand tucked inside it, reading); I can read in the dark when my wife wants to go to sleep and has turned off the light; I can read in the dentist’s chair while he’s drilling away; I can read while walking; I can read while driving—left hand on the wheel, right hand on the dots, eyes on the road—eyes on the road!
I used to worry that people who saw me reading braille in public—on the subway, say, or in a Starbucks—would think I was blind or pretending to be blind. A sighted person reading braille, after all, is a rare sight, wouldn’t you say? So, for a long time I was in the closet about my braille reading. I only read at home, or in my car. Or, if I ventured out in public with my braille, I would read it furtively, sort of cloak-and-dagger, braille-in-coat-pocket, keeping it hidden under my jacket or inside my knapsack, fingering the dots clandestinely, feeling somehow vaguely illicit about the whole thing. At the Starbucks, for example, I would build a little fort on the table around my braille magazine—backpack, cup of coffee, folded sweater, water bottle, phone—ramparts surrounding the treasure of the dots, hiding the braille so that no one would see me reading it and mistake me for a blind person, or a blind impostor, or a blind wannabe.
I am not a blind wannabe. But I do love braille. I love the physicality of it. There’s something deeply satisfying about using your sense of touch to access language, knowledge, the world. And I love the irony of choosing it—preferring it—over the digital technology that is everywhere around us shouting its claims of “the world at your fingertips.”
The native fluency of a braille reader who grew up reading braille is something I will never be able to emulate. But still, my speed has noticeably increased over the years. And while I’m proud of that fact, I also want to remember this other, perhaps more important fact: reading braille slows me down—and that’s a good thing. It’s one of the things I love about braille. In a way, wanting to read faster runs counter to that desire for slowing down, for going slow, for being present, for being, literally, more in touch with the world. And the word.
Whenever I come across a poet or writer using braille as a metaphor or simile—this or that is like braille or is like someone reading braille—I bristle a little. I can’t help it. Because I know they don’t know braille. Rarely if ever do I come across a description of what braille itself is like.
Let me tell you what braille is like.
Braille is raised white dots on a white page, like a country of igloos as seen from an airplane on a sunny morning in the Arctic.
Braille is like the goose bumps on the arm of the reader reading an exquisite poem she doesn’t totally get but can’t get enough of.
Braille is six dots in a cell. Two columns of three. Like a narrow three-story building at dusk with two windows on each floor, each window with two possibilities: light on or light off. Dot or no dot. There are sixty-four possible combinations of the six dots. Two to the sixth power. Or two times two times two times two times two times two. The braille reader is a safecracker intuiting the combination by feel, opening the safe and taking the money, the gold, all of it, every time.
Every written language on the planet fits inside the braille cell.
Many words in braille are contracted while others are spelled out. Braille is like the heart, contracting and relaxing.
Some braille contractions can stand alone and also within words, like the of in soft, the for in fork, the the in Theresa, the and in Andy and Sandy.
Some braille contractions are a single letter standing for a whole word--b is but, c is can, d is do, e is every, f is from, etc. It’s the ultimate compression: distilling language down to the first letter of each word in the sentence, like Levin’s secret message to Kitty in Anna Karenina.
A skilled braille reader can read with both hands, left hand beginning each line, handing it off to the right hand halfway across the page, the right hand finishing the line as the left moves down to begin reading the next line. Left hand to right hand to left hand to right hand. Expert, fleet, like a concert pianist, or like relay runners in a race, the handoff accomplished seamlessly over and over, line by line down the page, page by page through the book, book by book through a lifetime of reading.
I like the idea of touching the words. That may be just a romantic notion—I mean, braille readers aren’t necessarily more “in touch” with the words than print readers are—but I like it nonetheless. I learned braille in my early twenties, on a lark. I had a blind roommate. I loved watching him read. I had none of the attendant grief and/or denial that a person who is losing their vision will likely experience when setting out to learn braille. For me, it was just a hobby, something to do, a game, a curriculum of puzzles. More than anything it was fun! It was all about words. And I have always loved words.
I learned it visually first. Then, later, tactilely. Though it took me some time to develop the sensitivity required to read with my fingers, I don’t think braille has made me a more sensitive reader per se. But it has made me a more versatile one: I can read with my eyes closed; I can read with the book closed (my hand tucked inside it, reading); I can read in the dark when my wife wants to go to sleep and has turned off the light; I can read in the dentist’s chair while he’s drilling away; I can read while walking; I can read while driving—left hand on the wheel, right hand on the dots, eyes on the road—eyes on the road!
I used to worry that people who saw me reading braille in public—on the subway, say, or in a Starbucks—would think I was blind or pretending to be blind. A sighted person reading braille, after all, is a rare sight, wouldn’t you say? So, for a long time I was in the closet about my braille reading. I only read at home, or in my car. Or, if I ventured out in public with my braille, I would read it furtively, sort of cloak-and-dagger, braille-in-coat-pocket, keeping it hidden under my jacket or inside my knapsack, fingering the dots clandestinely, feeling somehow vaguely illicit about the whole thing. At the Starbucks, for example, I would build a little fort on the table around my braille magazine—backpack, cup of coffee, folded sweater, water bottle, phone—ramparts surrounding the treasure of the dots, hiding the braille so that no one would see me reading it and mistake me for a blind person, or a blind impostor, or a blind wannabe.
I am not a blind wannabe. But I do love braille. I love the physicality of it. There’s something deeply satisfying about using your sense of touch to access language, knowledge, the world. And I love the irony of choosing it—preferring it—over the digital technology that is everywhere around us shouting its claims of “the world at your fingertips.”
The native fluency of a braille reader who grew up reading braille is something I will never be able to emulate. But still, my speed has noticeably increased over the years. And while I’m proud of that fact, I also want to remember this other, perhaps more important fact: reading braille slows me down—and that’s a good thing. It’s one of the things I love about braille. In a way, wanting to read faster runs counter to that desire for slowing down, for going slow, for being present, for being, literally, more in touch with the world. And the word.
Paul Hostovsky's poems and essays appear widely online and in print. He has won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Your Daily Poem, Only Poems, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog. He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter and braille instructor. Website: paulhostovsky.com
Enzo Silon Surin
|
The Fragile Architecture of Hope: Writing Toward Repair
The week after the November 2024 election, despair was trending. Everywhere I turned—on social media, in passing conversations, even in poetry circles—people were talking about leaving the country, about the end of the world, about democracy as a failed experiment. As someone who grew up in Haiti under a dictatorship and watched the country I loved torn apart by conflict and a coup d’état, I recognized the tremor beneath that talk—the way disbelief can curdle into resignation. It was a strange chorus to live inside: anger pitched against exhaustion, disbelief against silence. I remember clapping my hands one morning and saying, mostly to myself, “Okay. We’ve got serious work to do.” It wasn’t bravado; it was a refusal to surrender to paralysis. That same day, I wrote a short post online that read: If we showed up to the rally together, we shouldn’t be walking home alone in defeat. If we’re going to get through this and rebuild, this is the time to forge connections—not when it’s convenient. And hope is anything but convenient. Despair, I realized, is a luxury not everyone can afford. When I heard people say it was too soon to hope, it felt like a kind of rejection, like being told to carry my grief alone, along with whatever small vision of repair I was still holding. But the page never turns away. To write is to hope, even when the writing begins in cynicism or utter despair. It’s one thing to name the wound; it’s another to build from it. Some of the most necessary writing begins in the dark, when we can’t tell which way is up, until a single line shows a way through. Even if no one seems to be listening, the act of making is its own defiance—its own small architecture of light. That week, I walked into my Social Action Writing workshop—a college course I designed for a time such as this, taught at an art school where words are just one of many materials my students use to make sense of the world—and found a small, steady light waiting for me. We had the rare gift of meeting once before and once after the election—fifteen students who refused to look away. We had been writing poems of witness and provocation, examining how language can both confront and console. But that morning, their presence reminded me of something else: that even when the world feels uninhabitable, there are still builders at work. The room hummed with quiet resolve. Students wrote about loss, justice, and the invisible labor of staying alive in an age of forgetting. They weren’t writing about escape; they were writing toward endurance. In a world shouting about endings, they were sketching beginnings. Without naming it, we were crafting hope. I’ve thought about that day often—how the work of writing became indistinguishable from the work of repair. In a year that kept insisting on its own unraveling, those students built something sturdy out of words. They showed me that hope is not an emotion but a practice, a discipline of attention. It’s what happens when we decide to keep showing up, even when we no longer believe showing up will change anything. In my forthcoming poetry collection, there’s a section titled The Fragile Architecture of Hope. I didn’t know, when I first wrote it, how prophetic that title would feel. Hope really is fragile. It bends under the weight of injustice and fatigue. It requires maintenance, constant repair. But it is also, like any architecture, the result of deliberate design—an act of imagination against gravity. When I write, I think about the materials we build with: silence, syntax, breath. Line breaks that hold the weight of grief. White space that lets the reader rest before returning to what hurts. Repetition as scaffolding, image as beam. The poem, like a structure, must hold what it was never meant to carry, and still let in the light. In teaching, I’ve learned that repair is rarely elegant. It’s more like patchwork: provisional, imperfect, necessary. We piece together something livable from the remains. In that sense, poetry isn’t just an art form; it’s a form of care. It gives us a language sturdy enough to name what’s broken without becoming broken ourselves. But the temptation toward collapse is real. Cynicism is seductive—it lets us feel wise while staying still. It gives us the illusion of control: if we predict the worst, we’ll never be surprised. Yet cynicism builds nothing. It only refines the language of ruin. Hope, on the other hand, asks us to keep believing in the act of making. To write even when the sentence feels impossible. To imagine what might be rebuilt, even as the walls around us tremble. Hope is the poet’s resistance to finality—it insists there is always more to say, more to build, more to hold. The truth is, I don’t think the world can be repaired by poetry alone. But I do believe poetry helps us remember why repair is worth attempting. It gives us a place to practice what the world keeps forgetting: empathy, patience, clarity, courage. It reminds us that language can be both witness and blueprint. Sometimes, when the news cycle spins itself into another storm, I think back to that classroom, to fifteen students and one teacher refusing to give up on the possibility of meaning. I think of how we kept writing, not because we were certain of hope, but because we were practicing its shape. Despair was trending. For some of us, it always is. Hope, I’ve come to believe, is not the denial of despair but its counterweight. It’s the hand that steadies the beam while the structure is still swaying. It’s the sound of fifteen pencils moving across paper, each one testing the strength of what might still hold. And maybe that’s what poetry is: not a shelter from the storm, but a way of standing in it together—hands raw, eyes open, still building. |
Enzo Silon Surin is an award-winning Haitian-born poet, author, educator, and publisher. He is the author of American Scapegoat and When My Body Was a Clinched Fist, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, and the founder of Central Square Press. He hosts the podcast It’s a Poetic Life and lives and teaches in Massachusetts.
Anne Whitehouse
POE vs. HIMSELF
On May 3, 1841, Edgar Allan Poe, a thirty-two-year-old editor at Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia, penned a request to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Smith Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard University. Two years Poe’s senior, Longfellow was established in an academic career and already had achieved renown as a poet, translator, and author of travelogues and romances. Ambitious and poor, Poe was hoping to make his literary reputation and support himself as an editor and tastemaker. He had been trying to raise funds for his own publication, to be called Penn’s Magazine, when a young Philadelphia lawyer and cabinetmaker, George Rex Graham, made him a liberal offer to join the staff of his newly established magazine, with a circulation of five thousand. Poe seized his chance. To impress the professor of modern languages, Poe self-consciously sprinkled his entreaty with French phrases and flattered him with compliments:
On May 3, 1841, Edgar Allan Poe, a thirty-two-year-old editor at Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia, penned a request to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Smith Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard University. Two years Poe’s senior, Longfellow was established in an academic career and already had achieved renown as a poet, translator, and author of travelogues and romances. Ambitious and poor, Poe was hoping to make his literary reputation and support himself as an editor and tastemaker. He had been trying to raise funds for his own publication, to be called Penn’s Magazine, when a young Philadelphia lawyer and cabinetmaker, George Rex Graham, made him a liberal offer to join the staff of his newly established magazine, with a circulation of five thousand. Poe seized his chance. To impress the professor of modern languages, Poe self-consciously sprinkled his entreaty with French phrases and flattered him with compliments:
DEAR SIR—Mr. George R. Graham, proprietor of Graham’s Magazine, a monthly journal published in this city and edited by myself, desires me to beg of you the honor of your contribution to its pages. Upon the principle that we seldom obtain what we very anxiously covet, I confess that I have but little hope of inducing you to write for us,—and to say the truth, I fear that Mr. Graham would have opened the negotiation much better in his own person, for I have no reason to think myself favorably known to you; but the attempt was to be made, and I make it.
I should be overjoyed if we could get from you an article each month, either poetry or prose, length and subject à discretion. In respect to terms, we would gladly offer you carte blanche; and the periods of payment should also be made to suit yourself.
In conclusion, I cannot refrain from availing myself of this, the only opportunity I may ever have, to assure the author of the “Hymn to the Night,” of the “Beleaguered City,” and of the “Skeleton in Armor,” of the fervent admiration with which his genius has inspired me; and yet I would scarcely hazard a declaration whose import might be so easily misconstrued, and which bears with it, at best, more or less of niaiserie, were I not convinced that Professor Longfellow, writing and thinking as he does, will be at no less to feel and to appreciate the honest sincerity of what I say.
With the highest respect,
Your obedient servant,
Edgar A. Poe
As Poe anticipated, Longfellow turned down the request. In a noncommittal yet gracious response, he conveyed to Poe his own compliments:
May 19, 1841
Your favor of the 3d inst., with the two numbers of the Magazine, reached me only a day or two ago.
I am much obliged to you for your kind expression of regard, and to Mr. Graham for his very generous offer, of which I should gladly avail myself under other circumstances. But I am so much occupied at present that I could not do it with any satisfaction either to you or to myself. I must therefore respectfully decline his proposition.
You are mistaken in supposing that you are not “favorably known to me.” On the contrary, all that I have read from your pen has inspired me with a high idea of your power, and I think you are destined to stand among the first romance-writers of the country, if such be your aim.
The two writers never met, and this exchange marked the beginning and end of their correspondence. Nevertheless, their names have been linked in the annals of American cultural history because of Poe’s literary attacks against Longfellow four years later in 1845, which Poe titled the “Little Longfellow War.” Poe’s “War” was an unprovoked aggression against one of the most beloved figures of the New England literary establishment, outraging Longfellow’s friends and fans. Chief among the contemporary writers who responded in Longfellow’s defense was someone who referred to himself as “Outis,” Greek for “nobody.” This curious contretemps in American literary history has intrigued generations of scholars. Who was Outis? Was it one of Longfellow’s friends, as some have thought, perhaps the poet James Russell Lowell who also published and championed Poe? Was it another poet friend, and which one? Was it Longfellow himself? Or someone else?
The year after his request to Longfellow and Longfellow’s polite refusal, Poe began to sharpen his steel for his Little Longfellow War. In the March 1842 issue of Graham’s Magazine, Poe published a negative review of Longfellow’s Ballads of the Night, a collection of original poems and translations. Longfellow’s translations, Poe claimed, failed to do justice to the author or translator, but Poe reserved his most scathing criticism for Longfellow’s own poems, basing his disapproval, as he would again in the “Little Longfellow War,” on theoretical reasoning: “Mr. Longfellow’s conception of the aims of poesy is all wrong,” he wrote, “and this we shall prove at some future day.”
Three years later, in January 1845, now living in New York and reviewing Longfellow’s The Waif in the Daily Mirror, Poe revised his conception of Longfellow as a didactic naif who wrote “brilliant poems—by accident” to accuse him of that most serious of literary crimes—plagiarism: “We conclude our notes on the ‘Waif,’ with the observation that, although full of beauties, it is infected with a moral taint . . . somebody is a thief.” Poe accused Longfellow not of copying others’ words verbatim, which is our contemporary understanding of plagiarism, but of appropriating others’ ideas, meters, rhythms, and images. Longfellow, he charged, was guilty of “the most barbarous class of literary robbery; that class in which, while the words of the wronged author are avoided, his most intangible, and therefore least defensible and least reclaimable property is purloined.”
Two months later in March, now editing the New York-based Broadway Journal, Poe took advantage of his position to expand his charges of plagiarism against Longfellow. His elaboration of this “large account of a small matter” filled the pages of the Broadway Journal for six consecutive weeks, from March 1, 1845, to April 5, 1845. Poe claimed that he was writing in response to several of “Longfellow’s friends,” who had sent protests to the Daily Mirror, defending Longfellow against Poe’s attack on The Waif. According to Poe, Outis was the most persistent of the group, and Poe reproduced his long essay verbatim from the Daily Mirror to the Broadway Journal, prefacing an even more lengthy response. Outis asked:
The year after his request to Longfellow and Longfellow’s polite refusal, Poe began to sharpen his steel for his Little Longfellow War. In the March 1842 issue of Graham’s Magazine, Poe published a negative review of Longfellow’s Ballads of the Night, a collection of original poems and translations. Longfellow’s translations, Poe claimed, failed to do justice to the author or translator, but Poe reserved his most scathing criticism for Longfellow’s own poems, basing his disapproval, as he would again in the “Little Longfellow War,” on theoretical reasoning: “Mr. Longfellow’s conception of the aims of poesy is all wrong,” he wrote, “and this we shall prove at some future day.”
Three years later, in January 1845, now living in New York and reviewing Longfellow’s The Waif in the Daily Mirror, Poe revised his conception of Longfellow as a didactic naif who wrote “brilliant poems—by accident” to accuse him of that most serious of literary crimes—plagiarism: “We conclude our notes on the ‘Waif,’ with the observation that, although full of beauties, it is infected with a moral taint . . . somebody is a thief.” Poe accused Longfellow not of copying others’ words verbatim, which is our contemporary understanding of plagiarism, but of appropriating others’ ideas, meters, rhythms, and images. Longfellow, he charged, was guilty of “the most barbarous class of literary robbery; that class in which, while the words of the wronged author are avoided, his most intangible, and therefore least defensible and least reclaimable property is purloined.”
Two months later in March, now editing the New York-based Broadway Journal, Poe took advantage of his position to expand his charges of plagiarism against Longfellow. His elaboration of this “large account of a small matter” filled the pages of the Broadway Journal for six consecutive weeks, from March 1, 1845, to April 5, 1845. Poe claimed that he was writing in response to several of “Longfellow’s friends,” who had sent protests to the Daily Mirror, defending Longfellow against Poe’s attack on The Waif. According to Poe, Outis was the most persistent of the group, and Poe reproduced his long essay verbatim from the Daily Mirror to the Broadway Journal, prefacing an even more lengthy response. Outis asked:
What is plagiarism? And what constitutes a good ground for the charge? Did no two men ever think alike without stealing one from the other? or, thinking alike, did no two men ever use the same, or similar words, to convey the thoughts, and that, without any communication with each other? To deny it would be absurd.
Outis proceeded to give the example of “an anonymous writer, observing a January thaw, when the snow, mingled with rain, and freezing as it falls, forms a perfect covering of ice upon every object,” who then wrote a description of “every tree and shrub, as far as the eye can reach, of pure transparent glass—a perfect garden of moving, waving, breathing crystals. . . . . . Every tree is a diamond chandelier, with a whole constellation of stars clustering to every socket.” Supposing, Outis went on, this anonymous writer put his description in a drawer. Soon after, there appeared in a publication a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier that described a similar scene, “The trees, like crystal chandeliers.” The similarity was not a theft, but a coincidence. “Images are not created, but suggested,” reasoned Outis. “And why not the same images, when the circumstances are precisely the same, to different minds?”
While praising Poe’s poem, “The Raven,” as “a remarkable poem . . . of uncommon merit,” Outis went on to maintain that, given his definition of plagiarism, Poe was himself guilty of this charge in his poem, which borrowed its meter and rhythm from Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”:
While praising Poe’s poem, “The Raven,” as “a remarkable poem . . . of uncommon merit,” Outis went on to maintain that, given his definition of plagiarism, Poe was himself guilty of this charge in his poem, which borrowed its meter and rhythm from Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”:
From Poe’s “The Raven:”
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore,
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore.
And again --
It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore--
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore.
Mr. Coleridge says, (running two lines into one:)
For all averred I had killed the bird, that made the breeze to blow.
“Ah wretch!” said they, “the bird to slay, and made the breeze to blow.”
And again --
They all averred I had killed the bird, that brought the fog and mist.
“ ’Twas right,” said they, “such birds to slay, that bring the fog and mist.”
Moreover, argued Outis, there was “an anonymous poem of five years ago, entitled ‘The Bird and the Dream,’” wherein he found no less than fifteen “identities” with “The Raven,” and “that too, without a word of rhythm, metre or stanza, which should never form a part of such a comparison.” He proceeded to describe these “identities” in detail. Yet, in spite of all this, Outis continued, he would not charge Poe with plagiarism. On the contrary, he heaped high praise on the poem for its “originality”:
Such criticisms only make the author of them contemptible, without soiling a plume in the cap of his victim. I have selected this poem of Mr. Poe’s for illustrating my remarks, because it is recent, and must be familiar to all the lovers of true poetry hereabouts. It is remarkable for its power, beauty, and originality.
Outis concluded his commentary:
Though acquainted with Mr. Longfellow . . . I have no acquaintance with Mr. Poe. I have written what I have written from no personal motives, but simply because, from my earliest reading of reviews and critical notices, I have been disgusted with this wholesale mangling of victims without rhyme or reason. I scarcely remember an instance where the resemblances detected were not exceedingly far-fetched and shadowy, and only perceptible to a mind pre-disposed to suspicion, and accustomed to splitting hairs.
Outis’s epistle galvanized Poe to a counter-response of nearly fifteen thousand words, “A Continuation of the Voluminous History of the Little Longfellow War,” published in the Broadway Journal the following week on March 15. Here Poe’s tone veered from the almost reasonable to the nearly hysterical. With respect to the image of “The trees, like crystal chandeliers,” Poe argued:
He wishes to show, then, that Mr. Longfellow is innocent of the imitation with which I have charged him . . . and this . . . innocence is expected to be proved by showing the possibility that a certain, or that any uncertain series of coincidences may be the result of pure accident. Now of course I cannot be sure that Outis will regard my admission as a service or a disservice, but I admit the possibility at once. . . . But in admitting this, I admit just nothing at all, so far as the advancement of Outis’s proper argument is concerned. The affair is one of probabilities altogether, and can be satisfactorily settled only by reference to their Calculus.
Poe took the opportunity to launch into a long and detailed analysis and comparison of his use of poetic meter and rhyme in “The Raven,” which denied any resemblance to Coleridge’s famous poem. One by one, he refuted each of the “identities” found by Outis. He claimed his arrangement of poetic meter was unique:
My own has at least the merit of being my own. No writer, living or dead, has ever employed anything resembling it. The innumerable specific differences between it and that of Outis it would be a tedious matter to point out—but a far less difficult matter than to designate one individual point of similarity.
Apparently beset by emotion, Poe allowed the tone of his rebuttal to Outis to escalate, until it is hard not to read in it a dominant note of (to use a term that Poe might have employed himself) ressentiment. Amounting to more than resentment, ressentiment is a deeper grievance, which often—as in this case—has its basis in disparities of wealth and social class. He wrote:
The plagiarist is either a man of no note or a man of note. In the first case, he is usually an ignoramus, and getting possession of a rather rare book, plunders it without scruple, on the ground that nobody has ever seen a copy of it except himself. In the second case (which is a more general one by far) he pilfers from some poverty-stricken, and therefore neglected man of genius, on the reasonable supposition that this neglected man of genius will very soon cut his throat, or die of starvation, (the sooner the better, no doubt,) and that in the meantime he will be too busy in keeping the wolf from the door to look after the purloiners of his property—and too poor, and too cowed, and for these reasons too contemptible, under any circumstances, to dare accuse of so base a thing as theft, the wealthy and triumphant gentleman of elegant leisure who has only done the vagabond too much honor in knocking him down and robbing him upon the highway.
In Poe’s conception, he was “this neglected man of genius” and Longfellow was the “wealthy and triumphant gentleman of elegant leisure.” Born to a prominent Portland, Maine, family that could trace its origins back to Mayflower passengers John and Priscilla Alden, Longfellow enjoyed a secure background and a fortunate upbringing. One grandfather was a Revolutionary War hero, the other grandfather a prominent judge, and his father was a prosperous attorney who had represented his Maine district in the House of Representatives. Longfellow had been privately tutored as a boy and completed his education at Bowdoin College, where his father was one of the founding trustees, Nathaniel Hawthorne one of his classmates, and Franklin Pierce in the class ahead of him. With his knowledge of French, Spanish, Italian, and German, his years of European travel, his academic sinecure at Harvard, and his comfortable existence in beautiful, historic Craigie House, in rooms once occupied by George Washington, Longfellow enjoyed a life of privilege that was everything that Poe’s life was not.
Orphaned at an early age, disowned by his guardian whose fortune he had expected to inherit, forced to withdraw from the University of Virginia after one year because of gambling debts, susceptible to drugs and alcohol, Poe lived a life of constant turmoil. He frequently changed lodgings and jobs, nearly always in poverty and emotional upheaval. Nevertheless, Poe considered himself to be Longfellow’s intellectual superior. Poe was a self-proclaimed literary theoretician, devoted to reason, logic, and rigor, an autodidact who cleaved to high, self-imposed standards. An intellectual outside of the academy, Poe had all the brilliance and dangerous notions of a man who had developed his ideas in relative isolation. In contrast, Longfellow, despite his formal education, was a dreamy popularizer and a borrower from other cultures, whose poetry inhabited moods and tales rather than ideas, and who showed little interest in literary theories.
Poe couldn’t forgive Longfellow for his popularity—his embrace by the literary and academic establishment and the less sophisticated public, who were reassured and comforted by Longfellow’s didacticism, even as they were in thrall to the music of his verses and his narrative skills. In contrast, Poe depicted himself as an independent voice of poetic principles, railing against charlatans like Longfellow and their cowardly, anonymous defenders like Outis. As he complained on March 29 in the Broadway Journal:
Orphaned at an early age, disowned by his guardian whose fortune he had expected to inherit, forced to withdraw from the University of Virginia after one year because of gambling debts, susceptible to drugs and alcohol, Poe lived a life of constant turmoil. He frequently changed lodgings and jobs, nearly always in poverty and emotional upheaval. Nevertheless, Poe considered himself to be Longfellow’s intellectual superior. Poe was a self-proclaimed literary theoretician, devoted to reason, logic, and rigor, an autodidact who cleaved to high, self-imposed standards. An intellectual outside of the academy, Poe had all the brilliance and dangerous notions of a man who had developed his ideas in relative isolation. In contrast, Longfellow, despite his formal education, was a dreamy popularizer and a borrower from other cultures, whose poetry inhabited moods and tales rather than ideas, and who showed little interest in literary theories.
Poe couldn’t forgive Longfellow for his popularity—his embrace by the literary and academic establishment and the less sophisticated public, who were reassured and comforted by Longfellow’s didacticism, even as they were in thrall to the music of his verses and his narrative skills. In contrast, Poe depicted himself as an independent voice of poetic principles, railing against charlatans like Longfellow and their cowardly, anonymous defenders like Outis. As he complained on March 29 in the Broadway Journal:
There is not a man living, of common sense and common honesty, who has not better reason (if possible) to be disgusted with the insufferable cant and shameless misrepresentation practiced habitually by just such persons as Outis, with the view of decrying by sheer strength of lungs—of trampling down—of rioting down—of mobbing down any man with a soul that bids him come out from among the general corruption of our public press, and take his stand upon the open ground of rectitude and honor. The Outises who practice this species of bullyism are, as a matter of course, anonymous.
In the 170 years since Poe published this diatribe, the identity of Outis, whom Poe compared to a bullying mob, has been the subject of speculation among scholars, who have attempted to identify various contemporary figures as Poe’s shadowy adversary. None of the candidates, however, has earned any sort of universal acceptance. Attacking Poe was one of the surest routes to popularity in most of the literary circles of the time, yet no writer stepped forward to take credit for Outis, and Longfellow himself professed ignorance on the matter, although Outis claimed to be a friend of his.
So long after the fact, the person of Outis remains a mystery, and Poe’s motives in initiating and prolonging the controversy a matter of debate. Was Poe exhibiting more of his out-of-control, crazy behavior in promulgating the “Little Longfellow War”? How seriously should we take his charges? Were his literary criticisms credible, if cranky?
In his long rebuttal to Outis, Poe offers a clue to his motivations when he defends himself against the charge of unpopularity:
So long after the fact, the person of Outis remains a mystery, and Poe’s motives in initiating and prolonging the controversy a matter of debate. Was Poe exhibiting more of his out-of-control, crazy behavior in promulgating the “Little Longfellow War”? How seriously should we take his charges? Were his literary criticisms credible, if cranky?
In his long rebuttal to Outis, Poe offers a clue to his motivations when he defends himself against the charge of unpopularity:
In one year, the circulation of the “Southern Messenger” (a five-dollar journal) extended itself from seven hundred to nearly five thousand,—and that, in little more than twice the same time, “Graham’s Magazine” swelled its list from five to fifty-two thousand subscribers.
Was the “Little Longfellow War” a publicity stunt instigated by Poe in an effort to try to increase the circulation of the Broadway Journal, as he had with previous periodicals? In Poe’s day, as well as in ours, controversy sold copies, and Poe’s quarrel with Longfellow was not the first nor the last literary feud that he provoked for the sake of boosting sales. More than one critic has suggested that Outis was none other than Poe himself. The inventor of the modern detective story, Poe enjoyed mysteries and games. As in “The Purloined Letter,” he hid his clues in plain sight. In an unpublished essay, “The Reviewer Reviewed,” Poe, writing under the name of Walter G. Bowen, attacked his own writings in a tone reminiscent of Outis. In her thesis, “Poe’s Poisoned Pen: A Study of Fiction as Vendetta,” Charity Lea Givens argues, “Even his short stories can be read as sophisticated arguments and vicious attacks on members of the literary community . . . he wrote that when he approached writing, he differed from most authors: where they chose to begin with narrative and historical influences, Poe began with effect . . . He wanted to have an effect—an original effect—that would impress his audience.”
While assuming that Poe was not Outis, Arthur H. Quinn observed in his 1941 biography that “Poe seized upon this letter of Outis as an opportunity to stage a discussion that would be good publicity for the Broadway Journal, of which he had just become an editor,” noting that Longfellow’s defender wrote “in a clever imitation of Poe’s manner.”
The first of Poe’s commentators to surmise that Outis was Poe’s invention was George P. Eveleth (1819-1908), who was a medical student in Maine when he initiated a correspondence with Poe in December, 1845. Eveleth peppered Poe with questions during his life, and after his death, he appointed himself Poe’s standard-bearer, correcting what he deemed to be the errors of Poe’s biographers. Although Eveleth and Poe never met, Poe’s letters to Eveleth were unusually candid, and Eveleth believed “that the natural tendency of my mind is into trains of thinking similar to Poe’s.” Outis’s prose style is a more tamped down, restrained version of Poe’s, though their modes of argument are similar.
All his life, Poe delighted in hiding behind multiple identities and inventing adventures and escapades for himself. In his life and his art, he was a master manipulator. In “The Colloquy of Edgar and Outis,” the writer Undine noted that Outis was “too good to be true,” a phantom foe offering Poe “arguments that he could easily shoot down, as well as giving him a preplanned excuse to repeat and expand upon his literary criticism.” Moreover, while purporting to criticize Poe, Outis flattered him, alluding to his “beautiful and powerful poem” and playing the same word game with Poe’s name as Poe had done earlier: “Mr. EDGAR A. POE. (Write it rather EDGAR, a Poet, and then it is right to a T.”
I agree that Outis was a useful invention for Poe, giving him an adversary in a public forum whom he could manipulate to his heart’s content. Far from a “pathetic wreck” on the verge of mental collapse, “thoroughly embarrassed” and “driven to his wit’s end to vindicate himself,” as his biographer Sidney Moss described him, Poe was an obsessive, self-promoting schemer, with a rapier-sharp wit, a love of intrigue, and an enjoyment of the joke that turned on itself like a Mobius strip. Indeed, these are the aspects of his character that speak so forcefully to our present day.
One could almost see Poe chuckling behind his moustache and his huge, accusing eyes—and behind the protean mask of Outis—as, in the March 29 Broadway Journal, he blamed Longfellow for “ridiculous, anonymous letters” and accused him of sending Outis and a certain Miss Walter (“a pretty little witch”) to attack him:
While assuming that Poe was not Outis, Arthur H. Quinn observed in his 1941 biography that “Poe seized upon this letter of Outis as an opportunity to stage a discussion that would be good publicity for the Broadway Journal, of which he had just become an editor,” noting that Longfellow’s defender wrote “in a clever imitation of Poe’s manner.”
The first of Poe’s commentators to surmise that Outis was Poe’s invention was George P. Eveleth (1819-1908), who was a medical student in Maine when he initiated a correspondence with Poe in December, 1845. Eveleth peppered Poe with questions during his life, and after his death, he appointed himself Poe’s standard-bearer, correcting what he deemed to be the errors of Poe’s biographers. Although Eveleth and Poe never met, Poe’s letters to Eveleth were unusually candid, and Eveleth believed “that the natural tendency of my mind is into trains of thinking similar to Poe’s.” Outis’s prose style is a more tamped down, restrained version of Poe’s, though their modes of argument are similar.
All his life, Poe delighted in hiding behind multiple identities and inventing adventures and escapades for himself. In his life and his art, he was a master manipulator. In “The Colloquy of Edgar and Outis,” the writer Undine noted that Outis was “too good to be true,” a phantom foe offering Poe “arguments that he could easily shoot down, as well as giving him a preplanned excuse to repeat and expand upon his literary criticism.” Moreover, while purporting to criticize Poe, Outis flattered him, alluding to his “beautiful and powerful poem” and playing the same word game with Poe’s name as Poe had done earlier: “Mr. EDGAR A. POE. (Write it rather EDGAR, a Poet, and then it is right to a T.”
I agree that Outis was a useful invention for Poe, giving him an adversary in a public forum whom he could manipulate to his heart’s content. Far from a “pathetic wreck” on the verge of mental collapse, “thoroughly embarrassed” and “driven to his wit’s end to vindicate himself,” as his biographer Sidney Moss described him, Poe was an obsessive, self-promoting schemer, with a rapier-sharp wit, a love of intrigue, and an enjoyment of the joke that turned on itself like a Mobius strip. Indeed, these are the aspects of his character that speak so forcefully to our present day.
One could almost see Poe chuckling behind his moustache and his huge, accusing eyes—and behind the protean mask of Outis—as, in the March 29 Broadway Journal, he blamed Longfellow for “ridiculous, anonymous letters” and accused him of sending Outis and a certain Miss Walter (“a pretty little witch”) to attack him:
I, “knowing what I know and seeing what I have seen”—submitting in my own person to accusations of plagiarism for the very sins of this gentleman against myself—since I contented myself, nevertheless, with simply setting forth the merits of the poet in the strongest light, whenever an opportunity was afforded me, can it be considered either decorous or equitable on the part of Professor Longfellow to beset me, upon my first adventuring an infinitesimal sentence of dispraise, with ridiculous anonymous letters from his friends, and moreover, with malice prepense, to instigate against me the pretty little witch entitled “Miss Walter;” advising her and instructing her to pierce me to death with the needles of innumerable epigrams, rendered unnecessarily and therefore cruelly painful to my feelings, by being first carefully deprived of the point?
“Outis . . . has praised me even more than he has blamed,” Poe reminded us, should we prove too obtuse to perceive it for ourselves. Magnanimously, he avowed that he bore Outis no ill will, for Outis had (as was intended) afforded him a valuable opportunity:
In replying to him, my design has been to place fairly and distinctly before the literary public certain principles of criticism for which I have been long contending, and which, through sheer misrepresentation, were in danger of being misunderstood.
Throughout its six-week duration, the “Little Longfellow War” was a one-sided skirmish. If Poe had hoped to provoke Longfellow’s response in his own defense, he did not succeed. When beset by critics, both at this time and throughout his life, Longfellow sheathed his pen. That is not to say that Longfellow was not upset by Poe’s attacks. During that spring of 1845, he confessed privately in his journal that he “damns censorious Poe.” He could have been speaking of Poe when he wrote, “A young critic is like a boy with a gun; he fires at every living thing he sees. He thinks only of his own skill, not of the pain he is giving.”
Perhaps it was precisely because Longfellow was so pained by negative criticism—Poe’s and others’—that he made efforts to protect himself from its effects by creating a mental distance. In his Table Talk, a collection of his notes and aphorisms published posthumously, he noted, “A great part of happiness of life consists not in fighting battles but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.”
Longfellow could afford to ignore his critics. No other American poet, before or since, has enjoyed such great popular success or tremendous sales; today’s comparison would have to be to literary singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, or Leonard Cohen. Income from the sales of his poetry enabled Longfellow to retire from his Harvard professorship in his forties. Of greater concern to him than harsh criticism was the need for stricter international copyright law to prevent the piracy of his works overseas. He urged his close friend Congressman Charles Sumner to introduce this legislation, an effort in which he was joined by another close friend, Charles Dickens, who also suffered from copyright piracy. Samuel Longfellow, his brother and biographer, estimated that for want of an international copyright, the poet forfeited forty thousand dollars in income—in nineteenth-century dollars, a fortune.
As I have noted, plagiarism in the mid-nineteenth century had a different meaning than today. Then plagiarism might refer to any literary borrowing, whether conscious or unconscious. In this broad sense, every writer is a plagiarist, and every plagiarism is not a crime. Critics could not agree if ideas were copyrightable. Could an idea be attributed to a single author, and how specific or original did the idea have to be to “belong” to the author? Plagiarism scholar Sandi Leonard has suggested that once stricter international copyright laws were established, the conception of plagiarism began to shift to a demonstrable notion of copying verbatim, with intention. The establishment of a legal standard redefined our understanding of plagiarism, rather than the other way around.
For Poe, the point was not the justice of his accusations against Longfellow, but the incitement of a controversy and the attendant publicity. The wrong that he was seeking to redress was not literary theft, but the unfairness of life that decreed that Longfellow was rich and successful, and he was poor and obscure. Nevertheless, the charge of plagiarism was more than a convenience for Poe. Themes of plagiarism, influence, doubling, and imitation, which penetrated deeply into Poe’s psyche, are expressed in his troubling fictions and colored all of his literary and professional relationships. Poe’s hypersensitivity to this subject and the complexity of his twisted, contradictory responses continue to exert their fascination, offering insight into the demonic psyche, the individual in extremis.
Balance, proportion, and moderation were Longfellow’s qualities. But Longfellow, a lifelong student and translator of Dante, recognized a soul in torment, and he pitied Poe the man while appreciating his poetic talents. Author and critic William Winter (1836–1917), who befriended Longfellow during his Harvard days in the 1850s until Longfellow’s death thirty years later, recalled that the older poet kept a volume of Poe’s poems on his table, singling out for special praise Poe’s late poem “For Annie.” (When asked to recommend an epitaph for Poe’s 1857 memorial, Longfellow chose the line, “The fever called ‘Living’ / is conquered at last” from “For Annie.”)
After Poe’s death, Longfellow provided financial support to Poe’s aunt and mother-in-law, Maria Clemm. Taking the long view, he said to Winter, “I never answered Mr. Poe’s attacks and I would advise you now, at the outset of your literary life, never to take notice of any attacks that may be made upon you. Let them all pass. My works seemed to give him much trouble, first and last; but Mr. Poe is dead and gone, and I am alive and still writing—and that is the end of the matter.”
_______________________
Perhaps it was precisely because Longfellow was so pained by negative criticism—Poe’s and others’—that he made efforts to protect himself from its effects by creating a mental distance. In his Table Talk, a collection of his notes and aphorisms published posthumously, he noted, “A great part of happiness of life consists not in fighting battles but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.”
Longfellow could afford to ignore his critics. No other American poet, before or since, has enjoyed such great popular success or tremendous sales; today’s comparison would have to be to literary singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, or Leonard Cohen. Income from the sales of his poetry enabled Longfellow to retire from his Harvard professorship in his forties. Of greater concern to him than harsh criticism was the need for stricter international copyright law to prevent the piracy of his works overseas. He urged his close friend Congressman Charles Sumner to introduce this legislation, an effort in which he was joined by another close friend, Charles Dickens, who also suffered from copyright piracy. Samuel Longfellow, his brother and biographer, estimated that for want of an international copyright, the poet forfeited forty thousand dollars in income—in nineteenth-century dollars, a fortune.
As I have noted, plagiarism in the mid-nineteenth century had a different meaning than today. Then plagiarism might refer to any literary borrowing, whether conscious or unconscious. In this broad sense, every writer is a plagiarist, and every plagiarism is not a crime. Critics could not agree if ideas were copyrightable. Could an idea be attributed to a single author, and how specific or original did the idea have to be to “belong” to the author? Plagiarism scholar Sandi Leonard has suggested that once stricter international copyright laws were established, the conception of plagiarism began to shift to a demonstrable notion of copying verbatim, with intention. The establishment of a legal standard redefined our understanding of plagiarism, rather than the other way around.
For Poe, the point was not the justice of his accusations against Longfellow, but the incitement of a controversy and the attendant publicity. The wrong that he was seeking to redress was not literary theft, but the unfairness of life that decreed that Longfellow was rich and successful, and he was poor and obscure. Nevertheless, the charge of plagiarism was more than a convenience for Poe. Themes of plagiarism, influence, doubling, and imitation, which penetrated deeply into Poe’s psyche, are expressed in his troubling fictions and colored all of his literary and professional relationships. Poe’s hypersensitivity to this subject and the complexity of his twisted, contradictory responses continue to exert their fascination, offering insight into the demonic psyche, the individual in extremis.
Balance, proportion, and moderation were Longfellow’s qualities. But Longfellow, a lifelong student and translator of Dante, recognized a soul in torment, and he pitied Poe the man while appreciating his poetic talents. Author and critic William Winter (1836–1917), who befriended Longfellow during his Harvard days in the 1850s until Longfellow’s death thirty years later, recalled that the older poet kept a volume of Poe’s poems on his table, singling out for special praise Poe’s late poem “For Annie.” (When asked to recommend an epitaph for Poe’s 1857 memorial, Longfellow chose the line, “The fever called ‘Living’ / is conquered at last” from “For Annie.”)
After Poe’s death, Longfellow provided financial support to Poe’s aunt and mother-in-law, Maria Clemm. Taking the long view, he said to Winter, “I never answered Mr. Poe’s attacks and I would advise you now, at the outset of your literary life, never to take notice of any attacks that may be made upon you. Let them all pass. My works seemed to give him much trouble, first and last; but Mr. Poe is dead and gone, and I am alive and still writing—and that is the end of the matter.”
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Author’s Note: I am grateful to the Edgar Allan Poe Society for making Poe’s criticism, along with all of his writings, available digitally. In particular:
Imitation -- Plagiarism -- Mr. Poe’s Reply to the Letter of Outis . . .” (March 8, 1845, text “A” — Broadway Journal) (Includes the reply of “Outis” from the Evening Mirror, March 1, 1845)
http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh03.htm
[Text: Edgar Allan Poe, "A Continuation of the voluminous History of the Little Longfellow War," from the Broadway Journal, March 15, 1845.]
http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh04.htm
[Text: Edgar Allan Poe, "More of the Voluminous History of the Little Longfellow War," from Broadway Journal, Mr. Poe's Third Chapter of Reply to the Letter of Outis.
“More of the Voluminous History of the Little Longfellow War . . .”
https://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh05.htm
(March 22, 1845, text “A” — Broadway Journal)
http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh05.htm
Imitation — Plagiarism — The conclusion of Mr. Poe’s Reply to the Letter of Outis” (March 29, 1845, text “A” — Broadway Journal)
http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh06.htm
“Imitation — Plagiarism — Postscript” (April 5, 1845, text “A” — Broadway Journal)
http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh07.htm
*
I also consulted the following books and articles:
Givens, Charity Lea “Poe’s Poisoned Pen: A Study of Fiction as Vendetta,” Liberty University, M.A. Thesis, 2009.
Leonard, Sandi, “Notes on Poe’s Little Longfellow War,”https://plagiarius.wordpress.com/about/, 2012.
Life of Henry Wadworth Longfellow With Extracts From His Journals And Correspondence. Vol. I. edited by Samuel Longfellow. Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1887.
Final Memorials of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vol. II, edited by Samuel Longfellow. Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1887.
Undine, http://worldofpoe.blogspot.com, esp. “The Colloquy of Edgar and Outis.” 2012. Among other sources, she helpfully quotes Moss, Sidney Phil. Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of his Literary Milieu. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1963.
Velella Rob, http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-parlor-poet-vs-the-raven-in-a-battle-of-literary-statues Oct. 3, 2014.
http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh03.htm
[Text: Edgar Allan Poe, "A Continuation of the voluminous History of the Little Longfellow War," from the Broadway Journal, March 15, 1845.]
http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh04.htm
[Text: Edgar Allan Poe, "More of the Voluminous History of the Little Longfellow War," from Broadway Journal, Mr. Poe's Third Chapter of Reply to the Letter of Outis.
“More of the Voluminous History of the Little Longfellow War . . .”
https://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh05.htm
(March 22, 1845, text “A” — Broadway Journal)
http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh05.htm
Imitation — Plagiarism — The conclusion of Mr. Poe’s Reply to the Letter of Outis” (March 29, 1845, text “A” — Broadway Journal)
http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh06.htm
“Imitation — Plagiarism — Postscript” (April 5, 1845, text “A” — Broadway Journal)
http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/bj45lh07.htm
*
I also consulted the following books and articles:
Givens, Charity Lea “Poe’s Poisoned Pen: A Study of Fiction as Vendetta,” Liberty University, M.A. Thesis, 2009.
Leonard, Sandi, “Notes on Poe’s Little Longfellow War,”https://plagiarius.wordpress.com/about/, 2012.
Life of Henry Wadworth Longfellow With Extracts From His Journals And Correspondence. Vol. I. edited by Samuel Longfellow. Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1887.
Final Memorials of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vol. II, edited by Samuel Longfellow. Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1887.
Undine, http://worldofpoe.blogspot.com, esp. “The Colloquy of Edgar and Outis.” 2012. Among other sources, she helpfully quotes Moss, Sidney Phil. Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of his Literary Milieu. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1963.
Velella Rob, http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-parlor-poet-vs-the-raven-in-a-battle-of-literary-statues Oct. 3, 2014.
Anne Whitehouse is the author of poetry collections: The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, The Refrain, Meteor Shower, Outside from the Inside, and Steady, as well as the art chapbooks, Surrealist Muse (about Leonora Carrington), Escaping Lee Miller, Frida, Being Ruth Asawa, and Adrienne Fidelin Restored. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love.