One my very first acts as a new New Yorker many years ago was to make the journey across three boroughs to Woodlawn cemetery in the Bronx. My purpose: a pilgrimage to Herman Melville’s grave. I came not to worship a hero, exactly, but—as Fordham University English professor Angela O’Donnell writes—“to see a friend.” Professor O’Donnell goes on: “It might seem presumptuous to regard a celebrated 19th-century novelist so familiarly, but reading a great writer across the decades is a means of conducting conversation with him and, inevitably, leads to intimacy.” I fully share the sentiment.
I promised Melville I would visit regularly but, alas, the pleasures and travails of life in the big city kept me away, and I never returned. No such petty distraction kept away a friend-across-the-ages of another 19th-century American author. “For decades,” writes the Baltimore Sun, “Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday was marked by a mysterious visitor to his gravesite in Baltimore.
Beginning in the 1930s, the ‘Poe Toaster’ placed three roses at the grave every Jan. 19 and opened a bottle of cognac, only to disappear into the night.” The tradition, which continued until 2009, is currently being revived with an American Idol-style competition (do you have what it takes?). The identity of the original “Poe Toaster”—who may have been succeeded by his son—remains a tantalizing mystery.
Today, October 7th, marks Poe’s death-day, and in honor of his macabre sensibility, we visit another morbid mystery—the mystery of how Edgar Allan Poe died.
Most of you have probably heard some version of the story. On October 3, 1849, a compositor for the Baltimore Sun, Joseph Walker, found Poe lying in a gutter. The poet had departed Richmond, VA on September 27, bound for Philadelphia “where he was to edit a volume of poetry for Mrs. St. Leon Loud,” the Poe Museum tells us. Instead, he ended up in Baltimore, “semiconscious and dressed in cheap, ill-fitting clothes so unlike Poe’s usual mode of dress that many believe that Poe’s own clothing had been stolen.” He never became lucid enough to explain where he had been or what happened to him: “The father of the detective story has left us with a real-life mystery which Poe scholars, medical professionals, and others have been trying to solve for over 150 years.”
Most people assume that Poe drank himself to death. The rumor was partly spread by Poe’s friend, editor Joseph Snodgrass, whom the poet had asked for in his semi-lucid state. Snodgrass was “a staunch temperance advocate” and had reason to recruit the writer posthumously into his campaign against drink, despite the fact that Poe had been sober for six months prior to his death and had refused alcohol on his deathbed. Poe’s attending physician, John Moran, dismissed the binge drinking theory, but that did not help clear up the mystery. Moran’s “accounts vary so widely,” writes Biography.com, “that they are not generally considered reliable.”
So what happened? Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center theorize that Poe may have contracted rabies from one of his own pets—likely a cat. This diagnosis accounts for the delirium and other reported symptoms, though “no one can say conclusively,” admits the Center’s Dr. Michael Benitez, “since there was no autopsy after his death.” As with any mystery, the frustrating lack of evidence has sparked endless speculation. The Poe Museum offers the following list of possible causes-of-death, with dates and sources, including the rabies and alcohol (both overimbibing and withdrawal) theories:
- Beating (1857) The United States Magazine Vol.II (1857): 268.
- Epilepsy (1875) Scribner’s Monthly Vo1. 10 (1875): 691.
- Dipsomania (1921) Robertson, John W. Edgar A. Poe A Study. Brough, 1921: 134, 379.
- Heart (1926) Allan, Hervey. Israfel. Doubleday, 1926: Chapt. XXVII, 670.
- Toxic Disorder (1970) Studia Philo1ogica Vol. 16 (1970): 41–42.
- Hypoglycemia (1979) Artes Literatus (1979) Vol. 5: 7–19.
- Diabetes (1977) Sinclair, David. Edgar Allan Poe. Roman & Litt1efield, 1977: 151–152.
- Alcohol Dehydrogenase (1984) Arno Karlen. Napo1eon’s Glands. Little Brown, 1984: 92.
- Porphryia (1989) JMAMA Feb. 10, 1989: 863–864.
- Delerium Tremens (1992) Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar A1lan Poe. Charles Scribner, 1992: 255.
- Rabies (1996) Maryland Medical Journal Sept. 1996: 765–769.
- Heart (1997) Scientific Sleuthing Review Summer 1997: 1–4.
- Murder (1998) Walsh, John E., Midnight Dreary. Rutgers Univ. Press, 1998: 119–120.
- Epilepsy (1999) Archives of Neurology June 1999: 646, 740.
- Carbon Monoxide Poisoning (1999) Albert Donnay
The Smithsonian adds to this list the possible causes of brain tumor, heavy metal poisoning, and the flu. They also briefly describe the most popular theory: that Poe died as a result of a practice called “cooping.”
A site called The Medical Bag expands on the cooping theory, a favorite of “the vast majority of Poe biographies.” The term refers to “a practice in the United States during the 19th century by which innocent people were coerced into voting, often several times, for a particular candidate in an election.” Oftentimes, these people were snatched unawares off the streets, “kept in a room, called the coop” and “given alcohol or drugs in order for them to follow orders. If they refused to cooperate, they would be beaten or even killed.” One darkly comic detail: victims were often forced to change clothes and were even “forced to wear wigs, fake beards, and mustaches as disguises so voting officials at polling stations wouldn’t recognize them.”
This theory is highly plausible. Poe was, after all, found “on the street on Election Day,” and “the place where he was found, Ryan’s Fourth Ward Polls, was both a bar and a place for voting.” Add to this the notoriously violent and corrupt nature of Baltimore elections at the time, and you have a scenario in which the author may very well have been kidnapped, drugged, and beaten to death in a voter fraud scheme. Ultimately, however, we will likely never know for certain what killed Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps the “Poe Toaster” was attempting all those years to get the story from the source as he communed with his dead 19th century friend year after year. But if that mysterious stranger knows the truth, he ain’t talking either.
Related Content:
5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Vincent Price & Basil Rathbone
Download The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Stories as Free eBooks & Audio Books
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
Cooping would seem to be so very highly likely a solution as to beat the rest into a cocked hat. Only bit of mystery left might be where he was snatched …
Not a bottle of cognac, I’m sure, but a bottle of Amontillado.
Stuff leading up to the cause of death
i think you mean amontillado not Amontillado ‑_-
I think that the cooping prediction was right because, of the way it was back then and they have a lot of evidence for it.
…Hi
I regret that Edgar Allan Poe had to die so mysteriously. I am a big fan of his, and would’ve loved to meet him, if I was alive during his day. REST IN PEACE my friend, and favorite author.
I am Edgar Allan Poe.
he died of drinks why is it so difficult to accept that
it is still a mistery why he died still this day!!!
E.A.P. could’ve died any of thoes ways, but he DID die by cooping… or he could be still alive…
I agree he did die from drinking that’s why Sarah ended the engagment
I agree with u why do u think Sarah broke of the engagement because he couldn’t keep a promise to stop drinking:(
He didn’t die from drinking, sure he drank halucegenic alcohol but he didn’t over drink it
he got shot
his wifed stabbed him in the back of the head and the raven ate his dead body
and then the raven put his beak in his mouth and lived inside him
He got dunked on so hard that he died amd the raped his dead corpose
what are the 13 death theories
is there any evidence to what yall said
@billy hell yeah shungbull yo got me chopped you think we ain’t got evidence on our theries hop off my meat
oh ya mr krabs
Who ate my Sushi.
wheres the lambsauce doh
I have a belief that a squirrel ate him.
First of all Virginia didn’t have TB, she got hit by a carriage and fell into a comma. Poe buried her with a bell and when she awoke from the coma she rang the bell got out of her grave and sought revenge on Poe. She rallied up all the masons, ravens, and black cats she could find and then murdered Poe by burring behind a wall. Since Virginia was thought dead she was never thought to have been the murderer.
what is wrong with these people.
Cool Passage need more imfo
If there were an another copy of his death certificate
he was sober for 6 months
I NEED MORE INFO PLZ !!!!!!!!!!!
I’m so confused at this conversation
your mom is edgar allan poe
dead ass?
she ended it because he was dead
sup
One my very first acts as a new New Yorker many years ago was to make the journey across three boroughs to Woodlawn cemetery in the Bronx. My purpose: a pilgrimage to Herman Melville’s grave. I came not to worship a hero, exactly, but—as Fordham University English professor Angela O’Donnell writes—“to see a friend.” Professor O’Donnell goes on: “It might seem presumptuous to regard a celebrated 19th-century novelist so familiarly, but reading a great writer across the decades is a means of conducting conversation with him and, inevitably, leads to intimacy.” I fully share the sentiment.
I promised Melville I would visit regularly but, alas, the pleasures and travails of life in the big city kept me away, and I never returned. No such petty distraction kept away a friend-across-the-ages of another 19th-century American author. “For decades,” writes the Baltimore Sun, “Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday was marked by a mysterious visitor to his gravesite in Baltimore.
Beginning in the 1930s, the ‘Poe Toaster’ placed three roses at the grave every Jan. 19 and opened a bottle of cognac, only to disappear into the night.” The tradition, which continued until 2009, is currently being revived with an American Idol-style competition (do you have what it takes?). The identity of the original “Poe Toaster”—who may have been succeeded by his son—remains a tantalizing mystery.
Today, October 7th, marks Poe’s death-day, and in honor of his macabre sensibility, we visit another morbid mystery—the mystery of how Edgar Allan Poe died.
Most of you have probably heard some version of the story. On October 3, 1849, a compositor for the Baltimore Sun, Joseph Walker, found Poe lying in a gutter. The poet had departed Richmond, VA on September 27, bound for Philadelphia “where he was to edit a volume of poetry for Mrs. St. Leon Loud,” the Poe Museum tells us. Instead, he ended up in Baltimore, “semiconscious and dressed in cheap, ill-fitting clothes so unlike Poe’s usual mode of dress that many believe that Poe’s own clothing had been stolen.” He never became lucid enough to explain where he had been or what happened to him: “The father of the detective story has left us with a real-life mystery which Poe scholars, medical professionals, and others have been trying to solve for over 150 years.”
Most people assume that Poe drank himself to death. The rumor was partly spread by Poe’s friend, editor Joseph Snodgrass, whom the poet had asked for in his semi-lucid state. Snodgrass was “a staunch temperance advocate” and had reason to recruit the writer posthumously into his campaign against drink, despite the fact that Poe had been sober for six months prior to his death and had refused alcohol on his deathbed. Poe’s attending physician, John Moran, dismissed the binge drinking theory, but that did not help clear up the mystery. Moran’s “accounts vary so widely,” writes Biography.com, “that they are not generally considered reliable.”
So what happened? Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center theorize that Poe may have contracted rabies from one of his own pets—likely a cat. This diagnosis accounts for the delirium and other reported symptoms, though “no one can say conclusively,” admits the Center’s Dr. Michael Benitez, “since there was no autopsy after his death.” As with any mystery, the frustrating lack of evidence has sparked endless speculation. The Poe Museum offers the following list of possible causes-of-death, with dates and sources, including the rabies and alcohol (both overimbibing and withdrawal) theories:
Beating (1857) The United States Magazine Vol.II (1857): 268.
Epilepsy (1875) Scribner’s Monthly Vo1. 10 (1875): 691.
Dipsomania (1921) Robertson, John W. Edgar A. Poe A Study. Brough, 1921: 134, 379.
Heart (1926) Allan, Hervey. Israfel. Doubleday, 1926: Chapt. XXVII, 670.
Toxic Disorder (1970) Studia Philo1ogica Vol. 16 (1970): 41–42.
Hypoglycemia (1979) Artes Literatus (1979) Vol. 5: 7–19.
Diabetes (1977) Sinclair, David. Edgar Allan Poe. Roman & Litt1efield, 1977: 151–152.
Alcohol Dehydrogenase (1984) Arno Karlen. Napo1eon’s Glands. Little Brown, 1984: 92.
Porphryia (1989) JMAMA Feb. 10, 1989: 863–864.
Delerium Tremens (1992) Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar A1lan Poe. Charles Scribner, 1992: 255.
Rabies (1996) Maryland Medical Journal Sept. 1996: 765–769.
Heart (1997) Scientific Sleuthing Review Summer 1997: 1–4.
Murder (1998) Walsh, John E., Midnight Dreary. Rutgers Univ. Press, 1998: 119–120.
Epilepsy (1999) Archives of Neurology June 1999: 646, 740.
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning (1999) Albert Donnay
The Smithsonian adds to this list the possible causes of brain tumor, heavy metal poisoning, and the flu. They also briefly describe the most popular theory: that Poe died as a result of a practice called “cooping.”
A site called The Medical Bag expands on the cooping theory, a favorite of “the vast majority of Poe biographies.” The term refers to “a practice in the United States during the 19th century by which innocent people were coerced into voting, often several times, for a particular candidate in an election.” Oftentimes, these people were snatched unawares off the streets, “kept in a room, called the coop” and “given alcohol or drugs in order for them to follow orders. If they refused to cooperate, they would be beaten or even killed.” One darkly comic detail: victims were often forced to change clothes and were even “forced to wear wigs, fake beards, and mustaches as disguises so voting officials at polling stations wouldn’t recognize them.”
This theory is highly plausible. Poe was, after all, found “on the street on Election Day,” and “the place where he was found, Ryan’s Fourth Ward Polls, was both a bar and a place for voting.” Add to this the notoriously violent and corrupt nature of Baltimore elections at the time, and you have a scenario in which the author may very well have been kidnapped, drugged, and beaten to death in a voter fraud scheme. Ultimately, however, we will likely never know for certain what killed Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps the “Poe Toaster” was attempting all those years to get the story from the source as he communed with his dead 19th century friend year after year. But if that mysterious stranger knows the truth, he ain’t talking either.
Related Content:
5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Vincent Price & Basil Rathbone
Édouard Manet Illustrates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edition Translated by Stephane Mallarmé (1875)
Download The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Stories as Free eBooks & Audio Books
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
Weird Flex but Ok
exquisite boast but will do
Still beat tho
Takeoff the best migo dont @ me
#LongLiveEdgar \=/
Nah u trippin skippa da flippa the best migo
Clark don’t want no smoke
YAll dont want le smoke
STFU
LONG LIVE <3
It be quavo
#LLEAP\=/
Gamers rise up
Yall think Im playin
calling all epic fortnite gamers, john wick needs your help. he is stuck in dusty divot, surrounded by fake defaults, and has no shield. all he needs is your credit card information, and the special 4 digits on the back
I’m confused
We all are
Not me because I am Ninja and Ninja knows all and understands all.
Who even wrote this article?!
edgar allan poe reminds me of ¨JS&B¨New Game
John Wick im here my four number are 6969 and my credit card numbers are 420420420
yoooo go follow my meme account on Instagram @Hipponoskippo2.0
Travis Scott is a better poet than this mf tbh
John wick I Got chu. Rubens credit score is 420. His credit card number is 675432876 and his 4 digits are 5436.
bruh
i got you
:(
Hi, Yall. I thin i saw Edgar Allan Poe yesterday in my dream. I think i may have seen the future.
Oh My God Really!?! Me Too We Must Be Twins Or Something.… :0
I think this website is a total gimmick. Illegal, annoying, kinda depressing, and most of all a looserville hangout. You all should be repoorted. Wait thats a gimmick.
Uh Oh Poopy
U is a liar, noob, and a total jack butt. oh and depressed. Butt I think this relationship is meant to be. Will you be my date to the Fazzoli’s.
Dear man dood u a looser,
you are the man of my dreams, i would love to go to Fazzoli’s. I love eating my own homemade spaget but this sounds fantastic. — PoopyPants598
Inapropriate, you have been blocked
The real edger allen poe is dead
Who is Edgar Allan Pow he sounds like a total looser to me. I think he should be cooped
Edger Allen Poe was my husband thats right i am his cousin Virginia.
ok.
boomer
That is Edgar Allan Poe to you.
Listen sorry to tell ya but ur ded my guy
I think This red vase is cooler than yours
Bruh, I think u is a phat looser and that you deserve no love.
stop being annoying please. You are making my head hurt or I will send kenth over to eat you.
Ok listen no one likes u get that through ur giant forehead.
I am not one of you guys that keep harassing each other. This needs to stop. I am the owner of this webpage, you will be reported.
Ok listen here Auntie Goober, no one asked for you ur opinion
Cool,no one cares. Also I went shopping today
he died from sicide
no one cares noah. yOu can have a headache over carloina
yo what school is this.
Go subscribe @kaysen stevens
Go follow me @kaysen.stevens on instagram
we all know that he died from alcohol poising
SILENC BOOMR SILENC BOOMR SILENC BOOMR SILENC BOOMR SILENC BOOMR SILENC BOOMR
licking them stinky toes eatin that fungus bro OH YA
U REALLY NEED HELP. stop get some help, you need it. coochie eater
SCREW OFF U ASSHAT YUR RUINING MY FUN
Stop arguing, clearly you both are mentaly retarted and need some help, now i advise you to go and seek some and stop bothering anyone and everyone chatting on this website. You coochie eating boomer.
silence you boomer now seek help.
He possibly died of a brain tumor. This would explain the way his remains were found when they found him when trying to move him into a new grave and why he reacted in such ways to alcohol.
No proof! Just a theory like all the rest of them.
Because it may not be true. If you take the time to try and understand what had happened that night, you will see that it is quite likely he did not in fact die of drinks. You will learn that he gave up drinking about six months before the night of his death, and that it is much more likely for him to have gotten Delerium Tremens. I am not saying that it is impossible for him to have died of drinks, I am saying that you should not be setting it in stone without solid proof.
he died from choking on vomit. sad part was it wasn’t his vomit
wow he hot tho
these Theories are a little too good
Divide and Conquer: Each of you will add evidence beside each theory as you read your chosen article.
Observations from articles:
Beating:
Cooping:”Poe was, after all, found on the street on Election day.”
Alcohol: “Poe had many problems with alcohol.”
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning:
Heavy Metal Poisoning:
Rabies:”Poe had all the features of encephalitic Rabies.”
Brain Tumor:
Flu:
Murder:”
Suicide:
Revised Hypothesis after reading articles?
One my very first acts as a new New Yorker many years ago was to make the journey across three boroughs to Woodlawn cemetery in the Bronx. My purpose: a pilgrimage to Herman Melville’s grave. I came not to worship a hero, exactly, but—as Fordham University English professor Angela O’Donnell writes—“to see a friend.” Professor O’Donnell goes on: “It might seem presumptuous to regard a celebrated 19th-century novelist so familiarly, but reading a great writer across the decades is a means of conducting conversation with him and, inevitably, leads to intimacy.” I fully share the sentiment.
I promised Melville I would visit regularly but, alas, the pleasures and travails of life in the big city kept me away, and I never returned. No such petty distraction kept away a friend-across-the-ages of another 19th-century American author. “For decades,” writes the Baltimore Sun, “Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday was marked by a mysterious visitor to his gravesite in Baltimore.
Beginning in the 1930s, the ‘Poe Toaster’ placed three roses at the grave every Jan. 19 and opened a bottle of cognac, only to disappear into the night.” The tradition, which continued until 2009, is currently being revived with an American Idol-style competition (do you have what it takes?). The identity of the original “Poe Toaster”—who may have been succeeded by his son—remains a tantalizing mystery.
Today, October 7th, marks Poe’s death-day, and in honor of his macabre sensibility, we visit another morbid mystery—the mystery of how Edgar Allan Poe died.
Most of you have probably heard some version of the story. On October 3, 1849, a compositor for the Baltimore Sun, Joseph Walker, found Poe lying in a gutter. The poet had departed Richmond, VA on September 27, bound for Philadelphia “where he was to edit a volume of poetry for Mrs. St. Leon Loud,” the Poe Museum tells us. Instead, he ended up in Baltimore, “semiconscious and dressed in cheap, ill-fitting clothes so unlike Poe’s usual mode of dress that many believe that Poe’s own clothing had been stolen.” He never became lucid enough to explain where he had been or what happened to him: “The father of the detective story has left us with a real-life mystery which Poe scholars, medical professionals, and others have been trying to solve for over 150 years.”
Most people assume that Poe drank himself to death. The rumor was partly spread by Poe’s friend, editor Joseph Snodgrass, whom the poet had asked for in his semi-lucid state. Snodgrass was “a staunch temperance advocate” and had reason to recruit the writer posthumously into his campaign against drink, despite the fact that Poe had been sober for six months prior to his death and had refused alcohol on his deathbed. Poe’s attending physician, John Moran, dismissed the binge drinking theory, but that did not help clear up the mystery. Moran’s “accounts vary so widely,” writes Biography.com, “that they are not generally considered reliable.”
So what happened? Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center theorize that Poe may have contracted rabies from one of his own pets—likely a cat. This diagnosis accounts for the delirium and other reported symptoms, though “no one can say conclusively,” admits the Center’s Dr. Michael Benitez, “since there was no autopsy after his death.” As with any mystery, the frustrating lack of evidence has sparked endless speculation. The Poe Museum offers the following list of possible causes-of-death, with dates and sources, including the rabies and alcohol (both overimbibing and withdrawal) theories:
Beating (1857) The United States Magazine Vol.II (1857): 268.
Epilepsy (1875) Scribner’s Monthly Vo1. 10 (1875): 691.
Dipsomania (1921) Robertson, John W. Edgar A. Poe A Study. Brough, 1921: 134, 379.
Heart (1926) Allan, Hervey. Israfel. Doubleday, 1926: Chapt. XXVII, 670.
Toxic Disorder (1970) Studia Philo1ogica Vol. 16 (1970): 41–42.
Hypoglycemia (1979) Artes Literatus (1979) Vol. 5: 7–19.
Diabetes (1977) Sinclair, David. Edgar Allan Poe. Roman & Litt1efield, 1977: 151–152.
Alcohol Dehydrogenase (1984) Arno Karlen. Napo1eon’s Glands. Little Brown, 1984: 92.
Porphryia (1989) JMAMA Feb. 10, 1989: 863–864.
Delerium Tremens (1992) Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar A1lan Poe. Charles Scribner, 1992: 255.
Rabies (1996) Maryland Medical Journal Sept. 1996: 765–769.
Heart (1997) Scientific Sleuthing Review Summer 1997: 1–4.
Murder (1998) Walsh, John E., Midnight Dreary. Rutgers Univ. Press, 1998: 119–120.
Epilepsy (1999) Archives of Neurology June 1999: 646, 740.
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning (1999) Albert Donnay
The Smithsonian adds to this list the possible causes of brain tumor, heavy metal poisoning, and the flu. They also briefly describe the most popular theory: that Poe died as a result of a practice called “cooping.”
A site called The Medical Bag expands on the cooping theory, a favorite of “the vast majority of Poe biographies.” The term refers to “a practice in the United States during the 19th century by which innocent people were coerced into voting, often several times, for a particular candidate in an election.” Oftentimes, these people were snatched unawares off the streets, “kept in a room, called the coop” and “given alcohol or drugs in order for them to follow orders. If they refused to cooperate, they would be beaten or even killed.” One darkly comic detail: victims were often forced to change clothes and were even “forced to wear wigs, fake beards, and mustaches as disguises so voting officials at polling stations wouldn’t recognize them.”
This theory is highly plausible. Poe was, after all, found “on the street on Election Day,” and “the place where he was found, Ryan’s Fourth Ward Polls, was both a bar and a place for voting.” Add to this the notoriously violent and corrupt nature of Baltimore elections at the time, and you have a scenario in which the author may very well have been kidnapped, drugged, and beaten to death in a voter fraud scheme. Ultimately, however, we will likely never know for certain what killed Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps the “Poe Toaster” was attempting all those years to get the story from the source as he communed with his dead 19th century friend year after year. But if that mysterious stranger knows the truth, he ain’t talking either.
Related Content:
5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Vincent Price & Basil Rathbone
Édouard Manet Illustrates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edition Translated by Stephane Mallarmé (1875)
Download The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Stories as Free eBooks & Audio Books
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
hey guys, knock knock?
who’s there?
Goblin!
Goblin who?
Goblin up deez nuts
*Spontaneously combusts*
not pog
Yo anybody wanna hop on a quick round of COD, don’t really care if you want to play meme or comp, could care less.
me too.
Not correct
i got 8 bodies
Sup Edgar
I ate ur mom
I sucked Joe Biden.fbf
cap, man i’m still alive waiting…
Neva,Neva,Neva the ocky way
Callin all roblox peeps taylor swift is coming soon
Callin all roblox peeps taylor swift is coming soon.….….
69 days till Xmas
yall straight cappin on my name im still reppin my block
I sharted myself
nerd🤓
My clay hands are becoming solid porcelain. I have always had potter’s hands. The throwing water absorbs the moisturizing oils of the skin. Leaves the hands rough. The clay paste dries and cracks the skin. Leaving it red.
But now my hands are hardening. In the bisque firing, my hands harden like porous greenware. The cremated carbon and sulfur escape, exhuming my soul from the earthen clay, little by little, drawing it back to its source. The soul stews out in a boiling whistle, agitating out from between the minerals lodged in the ridges and wrinkles of each digit. The palms petrify. The flesh sinters and binds to itself. In the glaze firing, my hands glow red as the enamel stiffens and makes the fingers rigid and reflective. The silicate vitrifies and turns to glass. Dust becomes crystal — like a baby’s flesh crystalizing into the windows of the eyes. I am born again in the womb of the kiln. I am a porcelain village.
I have received an order for a series of six ornate hand-painted vases. It is enough money for Dandan’s first semester. But I don’t know if I can complete the order. Though I struggle to find my hands, which have become like ghost appendages, I tell no one. I am frightened the orders will dry up. Dandan has been accepted at Columbia University for the fall and has always wanted to go to the United States. And she will need money. So I struggle to find strength and answers. For her. But I fear the pull of Tai Yi Shen — the great spirit — the creator God, pulling back the breath of life infused in this jar of clay.
The January mornings are misty, with a cold mist hugging the valley. My hands ache from the cold and wet of the river. Though my touch is going, I still feel hot and cold. The dirt is hard and stiff under foot and smells like the burned dust of the kiln.
I dig clay from the banks of the Jia Ling River. Back at my home shop, in Ciqikou, I mix various minerals into the clay. Kaolin, silica, and feldspars. I then wedge the day’s clay on a long wooden table, folding and pressing to remove all of the air. If I do not get out all of the air, the clay will warp and crack in the kiln. Then I begin the process of forming the clay into the shape of finished goods and ready it for five days of firing. For pottery, we use a wheel and throw the clay. For complex shapes, a mold.
As I mold today’s clay into traditional teacups using delicate molds, Dandan brings me my morning tea. It is a Jasmine tea. It is a honey orchid oolong tea. It smells of irises and orchids and the misty meadows of the Shikengong Mountain. It tastes sweet like nutty molasses with notes of a mild bitter metallic roast. Bright, coppery, and clean. With an after taste of the esters of bubble gum powder that is distinctive of the jasmine resin when properly brewed.
If I am a simple rice bowl, Dandan is a hand painted dining set. My given name is Jing — Jing Yuchi — but Dandan and everyone else call me Jane.
Ciqikou or Longyin Town in Chongquing, China is an ancient place. It means Porcelain Village and if legend is to be believed, is the birthplace of porcelain. The stone streets border ancestral teahouses, pagodas, street food vendors selling doughy mahua, and antique shops with strings of hanging red lanterns on every storefront. The Bao Lun Temple stands above the town and stares back at the North Gate. Dandan is excited for the Lantern Festival next week. It will be her last before her travels and her great adventure.
“Ama, we need to get ready for the lantern festival,” Dandan says.
“Bao bei, I have a big order I have to fill first,” I tell her.
“Pfoof. Forget about your orders ama, I am making the tangyuan. I went to the market before and I have everything: brown sugar, sesame seed, walnut, and bean paste. And lots of rice,” she says.
“You go in and start without me niu niu. I have to go down to the market and see Dr. Looey Zhou about the pain in my hands,” I say.
“It is so beautiful in the market this time of year. I will miss all of the red lanterns. You know what the old legend says the reason is for the red lanterns,” Dandan says, wanting to tell me for the eleven hundredth time.
“No bao bei, what is it?” I humor her.
“The Jade Emperor sensed an uprising when his favorite crane was killed by his villagers. He resolved to destroy the old village on the fifteenth day of the lunar year, the night of the new moon — the yuan xiao jie. But his daughter overheard his plan. The princess was in love with a poor fisherman’s boy in the village. Knowing what was going to happen she warned the villagers to put up red lanterns all over town. Then she fooled her father, telling him that the gods had already burned the village. And so every year we use the red lantern to symbolize the mercy of a young girl that overthrows the ill-fated curse of a tyrannical lord and to pray for yuan yue — a fortunate new beginning.” Dandan says, her face bright with a satisfied smile.
“You will have your own bright new beginnings soon enough, now go finish making the tangyuan.”
“Oh ama, you have had pain in your hands all your life, come help me with the rice balls,” Dandan pleaded.
“Later bao bei, later,” I say.
* * *
Dr. Zhou is a stout man whose black hair has a thick luster like that of a horse, embroidered with a few shiny thistles of white. His eyes are bright and skin taut, featuring a vibrancy that is unusual for a man of seventy-six. He wears a white Hanfu linen shirt with frog buttons and a choker collar. He smells of licorice and lemon and carries himself in a calm, exacting manner.
“Nushi Yuchi, what is bothering you?” he asks.
“I am losing feeling in my hands — losing touch,” I tell him.
“Ohh, Jane, that must be terrifying for you,” he says, taking my right hand and needling it in a form of massage, pulling on the fingers and working his way down each of the bones of the hand, and pressing and squeezing my thumb. “Your energy is very weak in these hands.”
“When I am working with the clay, I can’t feel where my hand ends and the clay begins and sometimes I look down and my hands are off the wheel,” I tell him.
“Your yin or po can be separated from your spirit. You know the story of Bayou — ”
“ — zhao-hun, the calling back of the soul. But I have no delirium. There are no devils hiding in my closets,” I say.
“Maybe. No devils. But Dandan is your heart. She is going to New York soon. Your essence is cold as marrow is cold. Your yang is unstable. But like cures like. You must steal a heart to replace lost heart, or you will lose all feeling and body and spirit will be parted forever.” Dr. Zhou says. “Zao hundun er po tianhuang. Cure for cold body. Bore open chaos and destroy heaven’s neglect,” he adds with a wry grin that only a very old man can pull off.
“You want me to take a lover at sixty-seven,” I say, perplexed. And then joke, “Dr. Zhou, are you flirting with me?”
“Take a lover. Adopt a stray dog. Whatever it takes to bring feeling back in balance. One more thing Nushi Yuchi, get yourself some warm clothes. There will be snow for the yuan xiao jie — all week there have been clouds over the moon.”
* * *
How does an old lady steal a heart. It is one thing for Dandan, but for an old lady like me who is losing her sense of touch to touch another human heart — let alone steal it — is a tall order. I puzzle over strategies and tactics. Food comes to mind. Visual allure is not entirely out of the question, as I have kept my figure and practice yoga daily. Dandan is the storyteller. I have no aptitude for words. Painting is another idea. But whose heart can I steal? Where do I even look? Will there be someone at the winter festival of the new moon?
The mail lady delivers my mail and the check for the six vases is there, just in time. I will have to go later and deposit this and get a traveler’s check for the gift.
I place the bisque ware on a cookie and begin the process of applying the initial glaze coloring.
These large white gourd vases are painted with three layers of blue glaze. On the mouth are the petals of opening flowers leading to a border by the lip of the vase. Below, at the bottom of the neck, is another border and a skirt to separate the body of the vase, with branching vines and ornate circular flowers in a fractal design, painted circularly around the curves of the vase to create an effect like movement. I add two bluebirds and a hummingbird for added flare.
Now for the glaze firing and then in three days the final touches. And I can’t forget the final touch of my special gift, the porcelain chest.
* * *
I go to see my friend Sisi, who works at the candy shop across the way. I walk in past the tourists, and we go in the back area of the shop where she is watching the Real Housewives of New Jersey and spending time on WeChat with her American ‘boyfriend.’
Sisi has big mantis-like eyes and a rounded head. Her hair seems flat on top like a small tight-fitting cap. Her cheeks are warm and curious, but she has a serious chin.
“Jane! You came such a long way to see me. I am so delighted! Will you be coming out for the lantern festival Friday?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I tell her.
“So what is going on Janey?” she asks.
“Dr. Zhou says I have to steal a heart,” I say.
“At your age? You’d sooner steal a penny off a dead man’s eyes!” she says.
“Hey,” I say, “it isn’t that bad, is it,” and I blush — and we both break out in laughter.
“You know the old folk story about the farmer, right? About the luck?” Sisi says.
“No, tell it to me,” I say.
“A farmer gets a horse, which soon runs away. A neighbor says, ‘That’s bad news.’ The farmer replies, ‘Good news, bad news, who can say?’ The horse comes back and brings another horse with him. Good news, you might say. The farmer gives the second horse to his son, who rides it, then is thrown and badly breaks his leg. ‘So sorry for your bad news,’ says the concerned neighbor. ‘Good news, bad news, who can say?’ the farmer replies. In a week or so, the emperor’s men come and take every able-bodied young man to fight in a war. The farmer’s son is spared.”
“Ok. That is a good story, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to get from that,” I tell her.
“It could mean a lot of things. But what I think is, maybe you are having trouble letting go of Dandan. Maybe like the horse that runs away comes
make me