Good day, fine ladies and gentle... man.

(This is a talk that I actually did for college. I just found the notes and thought I should share)

I...(pause for effect) Like poetry. I like Poe. I like Edgar Allan Poe. I think he is probably one of the greatest poet slash writers of all time, so my talk is therefore about why you should like him, probably not as much as me, but a whole lot. And why you should find out more about him.

He wrote in the preface to 'The Raven and Other Stories',
'With me, poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion, and the passions must be held in reverance: they must not - they can not at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations.'

Which I think is just fabulous, and rather true. But now, I shall tell all you uneducated cottonheaded ninnymuggins a little more about Edgar Allan Poe's glorious life.

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809 to itenerant actors, and brought up in England from 1815-20. He went to the university of Virginia from 1926-7, and take this, gossip girl, was expelled for not paying his gambling debts. Bam.

Now, don't think badly of him when I tell you this, but he did marry his cousin. Who was 13. But he loved her madly and she did die from consumption, AKA tuberculosis in 1847. So it kind of evened itself out in the end. He wrote the poem Annabel Lee for her, which if you haven't read it, is one of the most beautiful poems ever. Seriously. It makes me cry.

But other than his magnificent writing skills, he was a bit of a grump and a recluse and a booze-hound. Not many people liked him all that much. But I do. And that's what matters.

He died in 1849, which was a shame, but he basically did drink himself to death. He was found in a terrible state at an inn, and died shortly after that. In my head I seem to imagine that the 'terrible state' meant that he was found on a highway, covered in chicken feathers and near-death. I'm probably wrong.

So basically, Edgar Allan Poe is a fantastic poet, who you should really know more about. I did take his collected works with me to see Inception. Read Dream Within A Dream and you'll understand why. And there you are. Edgar Allan Poe.

And then I took a bow.

It was glorious.