I think one of these days I have to get to Baltimore for the Poe festivities. He is one of my all-time favorite poets and short story writers. I memorized The Raven just for fun when I was in high school.

Baltimore has been doing a great job all year in celebrating Poe. I particularly recommend any of David Keltz's performances - his Poe readings are not to be missed.

You should add the Maryland Humanities Council/Strand Theatre event happening on October 16th!

http://www.mdhc.org/programs/maryland-center-for-the-book/playing-at-poe/

Just saw the Poet exhibit at BMA- had the thought that western art and illustrators can't really do Poet justice- they should have brought up some of the pieces from Africa or Oceania. Poe's terrors and fears we all have but western art - especially American (except for Poe)-does not go honest or deep enough to capture his hieratic,vatic, iconic, ur-text concerns.

i mispelled poe as poet

anyway

a further thot re the tribal art that could best express Poe

stand in front of the great head of Coatlicue- Museo de Anthropoligie (sp?), Mexico City-

a huge Aztec head excavated during a subway dig!

a giant goddess "adorned" with severed palms and snakes

you will see what poe was talking about-

or Aztec ceremonial sacrifice knives- also in the same museum

so- i should not have left Mexico out!!!!!!!

(I try to imagine what Christ would have said if confronted with this head- what would he have said?!?!?) Any ideas?- please let me know- my name dave eberhardt

I've figured out what Christ would have said about Aztec Coatlicue- just what the Israelites said about Dogon and other Philistine idols- he would have smashed it to pieces.
Still it is a beautiful, terrorific work of art.
Any comments? My fellow Christians?

Coatlicue: The Goddess, demon, monster, and Masterpiece

Aztec Coatlicue figure, Tenochtitlan
Circa 1487-1521
Stone, Height 3.5 meters
Museo Nacional de Antropologia
Mexico City, Mexico

Coatlicue: The Goddess, demon, monster, and Masterpiece

The great statue of Coatlicue was torn down from the great temple of Tenochtitlan where she had reigned as a goddess before the Spanish Conquistadors buried her as a pagan idol. She remained buried until August 13th, 1790, when city workers discovered the colossal statue as they were removing pavement from the Plaza Mayor in Mexico City. They unearthed it and discovered that it was a ten ton sculpture of the Aztec deity Coatlicue which translates to “She of the skirt of serpents.” The colonial mayor arranged for it to be taken to the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico as a “monument of American antiquity.” The Aztec statue was placed in the university collection of plaster replicas of Greco-Roman works. The professors at the university decided the sculpture should be buried back in the place it was found. The Aztec image not only rekindled the Indigenous Natives memory of their ancient beliefs but artistically its very presence was vulgar compared to the other collections in the cloister.

She was again excavated briefly in 1804 so that German Baron Alexander von Humboldt could examine the massive sculpture; she was soon reburied for her repulsive image.

The Great Coatlicue, so named by archaeologists to distinguish it from other sculptures of the same deity, was not excavated until years after the Mexican Independence (September 16, 1810). She was kept hidden in a corner of a patio of the university, then behind a screen, as an object of curiosity and embarrassment; later it was placed in a visible location, as an object of scientific and historic study. Today she occupies a central position in the great hall dedicated to Aztec / Mexica culture in the world renowned National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Although the Coatlicue monolith was always the same object, the meanings attributed to here metamorphosed from Goddess to demon, from demon to monster, and from monster to present day Masterpiece.