Reread “The Pit and the Pendulum” today by Edgar Allan Poe.

Some of the Poeesque word selctions:

1. Sable
2. Moiety
3. Subterranean
4. Serge
5. Enclosure
6. Surcingle
7. Ultima Thule

I will not spoil the short story’s ending. But it is, shall we say, a cliffhanger.

I remember one time after having visited Whitman’s apartment in Camden, NJ, I made a literary pilgrimage to some of Poe’s old domiciles in Pennsylvania.. They were, as one might expect, masonry, dark, dank, often underground, and cloistered.

I have not made my mind up regarding Poe, and about where he stood. He seemed to be open and susceptible to perhaps too much and was perchance ill-equipped at moderation.

But he spun some magically tantalizing and horror-laden tales from realms of existential torture. About that, there is no doubt.